OCA Art Blog
I’m studying for an BA Hons Degree in Painting through the Open College of the Arts. This area of my blog acts as an assessment tool for my tutors, showing my progression through the course and allowing me to reflect on the units, exercises and assignments I carry out as I work through them. I hope you’ll enjoy following my journey.
First Module: Drawing 1 – Start Drawing (Aug 2011-
Second Module: Painting 1 – Start Painting
Landscape Drawing (part 1)
Exercise: Sketchbook walks Hmm. January/February is not an ideal time to be starting landscape drawing for the first time, is it. Given the fact that I’d got no idea what I was doing, plus freezing temperatures/rain/snow, I think I’d guessed this one wasn’t going to be a walk in the park. (HA! Well maybe more sitting on benches in the park). I’ve almost missed the fruit. Almost. At least it was inside! Oh well. I’m never one to shrink at a challenge, and although I think this module is going to require a bit of...
read more60
My Dad turned 60 on the 21st of last month. I promised him I’d draw his portrait as a special present and here it is, before and after framing. It was a special project this one. I’ve only ever done a couple of portraits of Kai before so this was a whole new challenge and one I lost myself in, loving working the lines and curves and soft eyes of a face I have known my whole life, and love dearly. And I loved it, because it was challenging but not too hard, and I felt like I was doing something that is becoming part of my bones and...
read moreAssignment Two – natural forms still life
To finish this unit I had one more still life to do as an assessed piece, trying to draw together what I’d been learning. As soft pastels and chalks had been my favourite coloured medium so I decided to go with them for my final piece. I liked the soft, impressionist style they created, allowing a combination of areas of blended colours and hatching lines. The mark-making feel of pastel work reminded me of some of Paul Gauguin’s still life pictures and I took some time to study some to give me some ideas for composition and...
read moreDrawing Animals
This was a tough set of exercises as I have no pets and no access to any really! If there’s a better reason for us getting a kitten I don’t know one, but I didn’t really get organised with that particular plan in time. So I had to improvise a bit and its meant I’ve not really done as much on this section of the course as I’d like – I’m spending time over Christmas with family with pets though so I’m hoping to add to this section of work over the next couple of weeks with some impromptu life...
read morePlants and Flowers
Exercise: Negative space in a plant Here I used my peace lily to do a negative space study – drawing the spaces around and between the leaves and stalks to reveal the shape of the plant. I’d found previous negative space exercises really helpful and I do think it’s improving my drawing. When I sit to sketch something now I instinctively look at the spaces first rather than the object itself. It’s a quite a non-daunting way to start looking at something complicated too – so easy to become a bit panicked by the...
read moreFruit and Veg Studies
I was going to have to really get to grips with colour for this bit as the next series of exercises consisted of drawing fruit and veg entirely using coloured marks. I had a play around with media to start with, seeing what I could do with each one. Once again I hated coloured pencil (grapefruit, below) although I think I did a better job here in than in previous efforts. I really loved using coloured pastels though – I loved how you could blend to create smooth tones and graduate the colours (apple, below) but also make looser hatching...
read moreStill Life
The next series of exercises in my natural forms drawing module was to look at grouping natural objects together into a still life composition, something I had started to do in the first module. I was to do two studies – one using just line, the second introducing colour in order to show tone. Exercise: Still life using line Oh how I loved doing this one. I chose objects for maximum line-y-ness (I’m claiming that as a word) and interesting texture, trying to arrange them in a way that would allow the detail of each item to stand...
read moreDetailed Observation Drawings
There is going to follow a series of blog posts reflecting back on my last module of drawing work. This is mostly for myself and my tutor but feel free to have a read if you’re interested. My second unit of drawing studies focused on observation in nature. Here I would begin to explore coloured media and draw upon the things I’d learnt in my first still-life unit. I was excited. I’ve always been drawn principally to natural forms when thinking about drawing and painting. I love the intricacy you find in nature, finding...
read moreArt and Fear
We romanticise the artist’s life, don’t we? The writer, the musician. We envy their talent and the easy way they seem to do something that many other people wish they could do. But it turns out there’s something they don’t tell you about trying to live a more creative life and that’s that you will feel shit scared all of the time. And I mean really scared. Paralysingly, stomach-churning, brain-burning scared. You imagine that just getting going will be the hard part, making the decision to step away from more...
read moreGiant heads and conkers – still life assessment pieces
I’m busy cracking on with my next module, but I thought I’d post the finished assessment pieces from my last one for my learning journal. The brief was a series of studies on still-life subjects, one man made, one natural, culminating in two finished pieces. It’s amazing how much you learn from drawing something over and over again. Change the arrangement, change the light source, change the medium and seeing what works and what doesn’t… The natural pieces are much more my sort of thing and I enjoyed these a...
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