KINGS PLACE - 1st July 2014

Welcome to your new blog site, which will serve as a sharing medium for your work, and as an ever-growing record and aide-memoire of what you've been up to.

I have collated what you did yesterday, and this will act as a spring-board for the next meeting (5/8/14).
We were so lucky with the weather yesterday - warm, but never too hot - perfect.

The challenge I set for the day was an awareness of PROPORTION. Whatever you are drawing or painting, in the end what you are doing is dividing up a space on a flat piece of paper.  Once you can be more aware of this, the way is then clear to alter these proportion, which will in turn alter the way that the picture is read. Simplistically, a picture which is 60% sky will read differently to the same scene drawn so that there is only 20% of the paper covered in sky.

A good example of this is some of the work PAT. W. did:-

Pat W

 The left hand image was done in front of the subject, with nice ideas about reversing the tones, and making the sky dark against the light buildings. This gave her a chance to make something of the proportions of black.  The second version (right) was done from memory, white on black paper.  The proportions have all changed, including the paper. Working from memory usually heightens the ability to place things more powerfully on the paper. Pat felt that neither drawing was what she was wanting, and the ideal lies somewhere in the middle.  Hopefully, Pat, you will have time to try and do just that, with a bit of playful abandon thrown in!
Next time Pat - more working from observation, and then from memory, and seeing how the two things support each other.

Then, we have ELIZABETH's work:-

Elizabeth 1

Elizabeth 2

Elizabeth concentrated on looking at the spaces between the leaves, and finding resonances with birds, even to the extent that a real robin plopped into place.  As we said before, these stand on their own, and wouldn't work if 'made into paintings' (whatever that means).  They are lovely and raw, and individual, and work just as they are.  What I have asked Elizabeth to do is to try and do another version, whatever medium she fancies, FROM MEMORY!  Let's see what that produces.  Continue with this way of working next time, Elizabeth - spontaneous and rich - and then work from memory.


JILL had to go early, but I caught her before she went.  She had been doing figure drawing again, and I had asked her to leave them as just shapes - no clothes/features, or anything. Many of the drawings were rather formless, but there were two beauties....

Jill 1

Jill 2

I especially really like the man in the top right of drawing no. 2.  You can tell so much about him and what he's doing from the slump of his body, and that lovely hand.
Jill - task for next time... draw/paint all the surroundings, and leave the figure blank - negative spaces.  You still need to draw them with all this sort of attention to detail of the gesture, but you fill in their context only.







Then we have MAGGIE, who ended up not feeling so good.  However, what she did do was really lovely :-

Maggie 1

Well done you.  in terms of the challenge set for the day, it's interesting to look at the drawing top left, and see how the 'busy' reeds give the whole thing a more energised feel, compared to the drawing (crooked) next to it.
I think we can all learn from how she's used the shadows in the drawing lower left, to tie the formal decking boards into the more organic pond and plants, so that everything can co-exist.
More of these starnge juxtapositions, put together in a way that they happily co-exist.

Gerald 1

Next we have GERALD, who had impressed us all with his copy of the John piper.  we talked lots about the use of really lovely neutrals, against the odd burst of well-placed colour.
He went into the churchyard and produced the following:-

I must congratulate you, because you SEEM to have cracked it (let's see!).
You produced some very nice little thumbnails to organise yourself first, and then these two colour pieces.

The conversation we had was along the lines that it would be difficult just to reproduce these in paint, so try them in paint, but make more developed decisions - beyond what you have here.  Try to incorporate some more drawing, maybe, or different weights/proportions.

Gerald 2

Very good
More next time, please.

PENNY was trying something very brave.  She wanted to make some sort of collation of all she saw - old & scruffy/new and urban/and wild nature - all butting up against each other.
She produced the following drawings:-

I was particularly interested in the way a curve appeared at the front of several of them.  The one on the lower right, with a simple curve and tree forms was the one that everyone responded to.  simple and poetic, with overlap to give some sense of volume and depth. Penny, you really score with glimpses through, but you need to get more used to leaving bits to the imagination - as with that drawing.  Let the mind have some work to do.
That is your task for next time - less is more.  Less precise spelling out, more dreaming!



Then PAT. K. produced the following:-

Pat 1- watercolour

Pat 2 - pastel

 Pat, the thing I was most trilled by was the fact that you produced some thumbnails , breaking down the component parts of the picture into simple proportions.  Really good. Stick to it.

We all swooned over the two little watercolours. The way Pat produces her neutrals near a strong colour (ie. the green) by just plopping in some other colours, and letting them settle and do their own thing.
Right Pat - you won't be let off the hook - thumbnails in future, to help you SEE what you've got, or what's too cluttered.  Hurrah!






STEPHANIE was also there, but had to leave early.  What I was trying to get her to really concentrate on was to identify what it was SHE wanted to say, and find a device to help her home in on that.
She's got all the skills to put it together, but needs to identify WHAT she's putting together!!

AND NOW I HAVE SOME IMAGES FROM HER :-

Stephanie no. 1

Stephanie no. 2

Stephanie no. 3

No. 1 was a lovely bit of observation through blind drawing.  She was sitting by the pond, and faced with such nature-chaos, it's very difficult to home in on what any individual can get from it.  It's quite clear from her drawing that one of the possible interpretations is a zig-zag of reeds, with a lovely flowing ripple of water and leaves through the centre.  Drawing no. 3 then explores the dense pattern of those leaves further, and what a drawing!  Really very nice.

Drawing no. 2 was part of a series she did, looking at layers of vegetation/sky/water, with two strong white bindweed flowers in the centre.  It would be very easy to get caught up by all the other vegetation in detail, but on closer questioning, the statement was going to be about layers, and the two flowers.  That comes out in this drawing.

Well done Stephanie - keep to those statements. One theme per painting, not the whole world jammed in, making it completely indigestible.