the artist’s toolkit: drawing - final submission

The Artist’s Toolkit -DrawingFINAL SUBMISSION

9th October 2014

5th November 2014

19th November 2014

26th November 2014

7th January 2015

14th January 2015

21st January 2015

28th January 2015

4th February 2015

11th February 2015

18th February 2015

25th February 2015

4th March 2015

11th March 2015

18th March 2015

25th March 2015

ReviewBefore the first session, I had already done a lot of life drawing, and was “sick” of it, in all honesty, as many weeks of my previous course were spent drawing a model or piece of still life. I didn’t enjoy life drawing on the previous course, as we did it day after day and for long periods of time, in a 2 – 3 week spell. The fact that these drawings sessions were only once a week made me happier and so I eventually saw it as a break from the other projects, that I found a lot tougher.

In the early sessions, I wasn’t happy with my work, although then again I wasn’t pleased with any of the work that I had done on the course. I knew from my own personal taste and my own drawings, my line drawings are what I like the most. It took me a while to really get to grips with the human figure, as my drawings were not very accurate. I then started to use my black pens, which I tend to use on my own personal drawings. I wanted my pen drawings to be as good as possible, so if I wanted to continue improving with pen I should continue using them, obviously. The weeks progressed, and I started to see a difference, and more importantly an improvement, in my work. Perhaps due to my own attitude at the time, my work seemed to be getting better across the board, and I believe life drawing was key to my change in attitude. As my work started to get more of a notice, I was receiving more positive feedback than negative. I, therefore, wanted this to continue and the way to do that was to do the best work possible, and I believed that was by persisting with the line art style using a pen. Despite the odd week when we did “something different”, I, more often than not, used pen. Looking back, I should have experimented more and sooner. I tried to use the pen differently, I tried to add paint, ink, coloured pen, but nothing seemed to improve the clean line art, and occasionally made it worse. It was, unfortunately, in the last session when I noticed what worked well with the line drawings, and that was using colouring pencils. I don’t quite understand why I didn’t use them sooner. I really like the 2 drawings from that session, where I used colour pencils. They show tone and light, and work well with the smooth lines of the pen. It is, however, the session on the 21st January 2015, when I really started to like my work and is probably the session that I produced the best work, or at least my favourite – Although, the work on the 11th March 2015 when we did the post cards is another session that I remember being especially pleased with my work.

Overall, I am very happy with the progress that I made in the life drawing sessions. I started the year hating my work and it will end with me being proud of the style that I have developed over this year.