Fell from Grace: January 2020

Exercise 4 - shadows and reflected light

Still lifes using charcoal (urghh) of two objects with different reflective surfaces. I had several goes at this as I found it rather hard work. I don't particularly like charcoal, and also I find ellipses pretty difficult as you'll see. After another chat with my friend down the road, I got the idea of leading edge and I think I improved slightly.

Project 2 - Basic Shapes and fundamental form

Here we're looking at groups of objects, shadow, mark making and tone

Exercise 3 - Creating shadow using lines and marks

I enjoyed this one, as it really is something new for me and not something I've really tried before. I found I liked using lines for hatch marks, etc, but found using dots incredibly difficult and tedious

Exercise 2 - Observing shadow using blocks of tone

Firstly, two pale simple shaped objects with one light source

Exercise 1 - Groups of objects

We had to take at least objects and create a loose description of them using just one colour, making note of the shapes between them and the reflections etc.

Exercise 2 Experimenting with Texture

This was essentially mark making, but I don't think I quite got it as I've just drawn the textures in detail rather than experimenting with different marks. Actually the mark making was a new thing for me, as so much has been so far. Talking to my friend (ex RSA) he recommended that I have a look at Rembrandt's work in drawing and in mark making and so I ordered a paperback and two on the kindle so that I can blow them up on the ipad and take a closer look.

Exercise 1 - Warmup

We were asked to try some unusual drawing actvities such as:

squeezing and dripping washing up liquid in the sink
dragging a stick in the sand
pulling a bike through a puddle
using a torch or sparkler at night to draw patterns in the air

We were also asked to get someone to photograph/film us doing the activity. This wasn't possible for me, so I took some photos myself of the temporary images I created.

Washing up liquid in the sink ...

These are washing up liquid plus I added some cascara (coffee flower) syrup. Sadly the yellow liquid didn't show up very well (at all) on the mustard yellow sink (!) - on the photos one can see some variation and bleeding, but really not very satisfying and not enough light to even get the reflections of the w.u. liquid.
I didn't have access to any of the above suggestions, so I pulled out some thin ribbon and tried making lines and patterns with it on a pad of pastel paper for variation in background. I tried different lighting to give different shadows but these didn't show up on the photos. I had a bit of fun with this and felt that the second 'pattern' fitness a female human torso.

Next, in lieu of sand, I tried coconut flour. Firstly I just patted my fingers in the flour on a red background:

Next I shook the paper to try and flatten and even out the flour and I got a lovely texture that was reminiscent of sand on the beach after the tide's gone out:

Following this, I made tracks in the flour with a drinking straw and with my fingers

I was a bit disappointed with this as it wasn't as satisfying as I'd hoped. Maybe it would've been better if I'd used it in a flat tray with more flour?
I went outside for some fresh air and a think. I noticed that my lawn needed cutting, and that there was a very large dandelion on it with nice stems:

So I had a go at plaiting the stems:

Then I noticed the lawn shears so I had a play around with those, I wanted to cut a pattern in the lawn, but it's too long and they were too crude, so I used a windfall apple an the shears'u long blades and handles to create line and form: