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
Still 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...
read moreTexture
Having tackled line, and light, tone and composition, I now got to explore how to depict an object’s texture through drawing – that is, how to describe its surface using marks and lines. And, ohhh now we’re talking. Now we’re starting to get into the really creative kind of drawing – looking at something and thinking “how can I relate the feel of that something onto this page”. I know that when I start to study painting next year that this is what I’ll love most. The texture of something says...
read moreStill Life part 2: negative space
Now this was a useful one – teaching you to focus on the spaces around and between objects. Using the line of a table arranged so it’s towards the back of a group of objects, instead of drawing items individually, we were encouraged to place our pencil on the paper and boldly draw the line that ran from the table, up along and around the top of the objects, trying not to keep our eyes focused on the subject rather than looking at the pencil, going slowly and really really looking. Rather than the drawing objects themselves, this...
read moreStill Life part 1: composition
Having looked at line and tone and light I was now moving on to think about how to bring all the things I’d learnt together into a still life studies. I was realising there was so much to think about. It wasn’t just a matter of thinking “right, there’s a group of objects – I’ll draw that” – how you controlled the light, the arrangement of objects, how you made the marks and what medium you used, what paper used and how you composed the drawing on it would all affect the picture. I’d have to...
read moreOn Tone and Light
With line starting to feel more confident it was time to start studying tone – the play of light and dark. I’ve always had a good eye for tone. When I’m painting it’s the capture of that, the subtle graduations in colour that I always loved finding and mixing. And it’s why I’ve always enjoyed charcoal, with it allowing for such gentle blending and graduations of shade. Having never done much pencil and ink work I needed to learn new ways of depicting tone and so began to learn some new techniques, using line...
read moreLine
So, I had a spent a happy time scribbling on paper and mark-making and absolutely not thinking about drawing. But since this first part of the degree was a ‘Start Drawing’ course, I was going to have to at some point, wasn’t I. Sigh. My second project was to explore basic shapes and forms just in basic, plain line, and needless to say my first attempts were atrocious. And it’s stupid really, because I can draw, I know I can, but it’s amazing how much confidence can affect what you’re doing. My lines were...
read moreOn artists and ears, and, more specifically, one Mr Van Gogh
One of the things I’m looking forward to most about studying art is the chance to learn a bit more art history and culture as well as the practical stuff. I think when you’re drawn to making art, you simultaneously become drawn to other people who do too, especially because, you get the feeling that a lot of people that make art don’t think or see quite like everyone else. They’re not usually the 9-5ers. And they’re usually seem to be complex, often flawed and maybe difficult, or just different. So, like me,...
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