Assignment 1
Exploring the everyday is a fairly loose theme, but somehow I think I may not be able to adhere to it. So much of what I like to draw is fantastical, but I suppose we will have to see how I do.
My everyday life is not very exciting, it very much consists of staying at home, so Candy Jernigan’s art was right up my alley. Her expression of the everyday through small objects drawn semi-realistically in pencil convey everyday life in an almost humorous way, because we are forced to make a story out of just one or two objects.
Similarly, but in a totally different way, Frida Khalo’s frequent use of faces and people greatly helps me with picturing what exactly I am going to draw during this entire course. The point of drawing so many similar faces is not to just draw faces of specific people, but to convey emotion. You see, I love drawing people, but I doubt the people I see everyday would appreciate if I ended up drawing them every single day for the next couple of months. Drawing people in order to convey my emotions rather than necessarily drawing just what I see is an idea I can get behind.
I first tried to emulate Frida’s style as well as the theme, but I do not think I succeeded. I used pens oil pastels and watercolors to sketch.
I then repeated the same theme in a style more similar to my own. I tried to be creative with the mediums I used and painted the background with oxidized pomegranate juice and the foreground with fresh pomegranate juice. The end result looks more purple than red which is unexpected.
Illustration in pen inspired form a Biblical verse.
Leonardo Da Vinci style studies
Sadly, I found that I could not really keep to one sketchbook. Part of the everyday which I love drawing is people watching. And that is more difficult to do with a larger sketchbook, so I found myself using a the smaller sketchbook more that I would have preferred to.
Most of these quick sketches are either in pen or in watercolor. Sometimes both.
Van Gogh style studies
Hokusai style study
These three are the current exception to the watercolor and pen public drawing rule. These are drawn in pencil. The effect looks really nice, but I dislike the fact that I have to put extra papers between the pages lest they smudge. The church is one I live very close to, and the two lovely ladies, Mihaela and Mariana, were ever so kind to model for me.
Pages that have not worked out
Hiding things in sketchbooks
I am not sure if this would count as cheating or not, but the four drawings above are for a client, and therefore I would argue, part of my everyday life. If it is cheating I apologize, but I did start to apply some of the things I learned before such as hiding with papers or writing down my thoughts. Writing my thoughts has not previously been something I have done. But as I studied the sketchbooks of other great artists, I saw how many put their thoughts down in text too. This seems to be a no brainer but somehow I always excluded writing down words as something you would do in a sketchbook. I find the rediscovery of notetaking liberating. It also makes me feel a little like a scientist for some reason.
Guillermo Del Toro style study
