Posts by Josie
Landscape Drawing (part 2)
It’s been a while since I updated my learning journal. It’s been such a tough couple of months. My health has been dreadful, childcare has been short with holidays and Kai off poorly, all of which has added up to tiny, scraped amounts of time to give over to my course and my drawing, trying to fit them round breaks in the weather when I could get outside to work. BUT I have kept going, albeit with confidence struggling, and I’ve managed to get another unit finished. Huzzah. I shall be writing up a bit about it over the next few days so my tutor can follow my progress.
I left off last time having started some landscape drawing and feeling a bit overwhelmed with the complexity of the subject. Looking at a landscape view there was SO MUCH to think about, a mass of focal points and tone and depth and detail, which I was trying to include all of. Feeling really out of my depth (postscript: I’ve just realised that’s a really awful landscape drawing joke. Boom boom!) I bought a book on landscape drawing to see if I could get some pointers (Drawing Scenery: landscapes and seascapes by Jack Hamm). It helped hugely – the book helped me see that drawing landscapes is a process of crafting a picture. Your job is not the faithfully reproduce what’s in front of you – it’s to create something interesting and compelling to look at. Your job is to lead a viewer’s eye in and around a picture. So I learnt about framing a picture and picking focal points and using to take the viewer’s eyes on a journey. You chose to emphasise certain things, through the amount of detail you give it, or by manipulating light and contrast in the picture. And I learnt more about composition in general – how the ‘rule of thirds’ (working in areas of threes, and, imagining your picture within a three by three grid position and positioning focal points on the cross lines) helps to create pictures more pleasing to the eye. (Why is that, do you think? It does seem to be true though).
I spent some time wandering round Birmingham Art Gallery looking at landscape paintings with all these new little bits of knowledge in my head and all of a sudden I found I understood what the artists were aiming for when they planned their picture. I saw how that darker area of path lead your eye HERE to THAT cottage and then the sweep of foliage and the way the fall of light in the distance had been emphasised lead you round to THAT group of trees etc etc.
And with all that in mind I sat down to plan my next exercise…
Read More‘Escape’ Writing Workshop Contribution – by @theghostshirt
A contribution to this week’s Writing Workshop, by David, @theghostshirt
Escape
When I was six we ran away from home
my older brother and I, together defiant.
We ran, we walked fast, we escaped,
off to the duck pond, aggrieved and angry.
The duck pond was too far for me,
a place not on the list of those I was allowed to go.
I turned back alone, my brother older and braver,
he went on without me, as I slunk home
I managed to sneak in, the door was open,
quick to my bedroom, I hid under my bed.
My brother returned, I heard the commotion,
Where was I? My mother demanded as he cried.
I was lost to her, the pain rose in her voice,
taken, abducted. Where had I gone?
I heard it all from under the bed, listening and silent,
breathing and living and waiting to rise from the dead.
Forty years on, my mother lay, no pain left in her voice,
her last night with cancer, the flight, the final escape.
On top of the bed, breathing, silent and dying
I sang to her, held her hand, moistened her dry lips
That night she ran away from me, too far to follow
to be with my father, in places I am not yet allowed to go.
My brother came; we sat together, pain in our voices,
breathing, living, we watched as she escaped to the dead.
Read MoreWriting Workshop – Escape
Howdy lovely people, so sorry this is late up. Having a really rough few days (again, bleugh) so I’m going to have to post the linky and come back and add my own contribution later in the week.
Thanks for taking part!
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Leave your name and the URL to your post in the Linky below (the URL should be to your post not just to your blog) – it’ll be open til Sunday night so if you haven’t had chance to respond yet, then you’ve got plenty of time to join in. Don’t forget that anyone can take part! New prompts will be up this time next week, so I hope to see you back soon.
Read MoreCompany
Today was the red of the apple you dropped as you fell asleep after lunch. It was the poems I read in the shade of the washing as you slept, and the shadows of clothes dancing a jig on the line. It was the curl of your eyelashes, and light on bubbly washing-up water, and the way the sun caught your hair as we sat eating biscuits in the field.
It was all the words we thought up to describe how much we liked our chicken casserole, and watching you eat seconds, and then thirds, and the noises we made when we were full down to our toes and the way we prodded each other to make sure there was no room left hidden behind our knees. It was the dozens and dozens of things we thought about and talked about as we passed our day, like if horses liked crisps (no), and what happens to water when it goes down the drain (it goes up a pipe to the sky and falls down again).
That was today, little bear, and it was wonderful.
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