Module 2; Assignment 2b; Own Series of Drawings

I have made a series of drawings using different techniques and I have tried to vary the style. Perhaps I have not quite succeeded in making a varied balance between tones and contrasts – and welcome views.

A Shoe – “My Party Shoe”

I started off with a shoe and picked deliberately out a “party-shoe” with an ovious bow and open toe and open heel. I decided to make this on an A3-format and to use black ink and a bit “flimsy” technique. I tried to draw with my whole arm and drew quite lightly. I was a bit inspired by the images of the ducks in the “task paper”.

I fee I managed to capture the character of the motif and was quite content with the way I varied different depictions from different perspectives. I also think the balance of the picture is OK with a few thicker lines and a few “flimsy”.

A Body part – “The Skull to be Dressed”

I decided to be a bit more elaborate than just drawing a part of my or somebody else’s body part and got the idea of “dressing a skull” – when looking closely springs can be visible between the mask and hair and the skull. I was also inspired by the diamond encrusted skulls by Damien Hirst but there are several artists doing skulls with a similar concept.

Dress the skull

 When inspecting the result – I think I should have made the contrasts much more visible. It is somewhat difficult to separate the skull and the face mask.

Something that grows – “Onions in the Net”

When selecting onions as “something that grows” I thought of different concepts – onions that really do grow – in the soil and under the ground – with long straight leaves above the ground – but also the fact that once they have left the ground they are dried and placed in a net – as in this case. Hence I made the lower right corner black. I glued black paper on to the drawing paper before starting to draw. Gradually when considering the composition I thought of Vasarely’s work and found out that onions are fairly typical and graphical in form and structure with “leaves” that constitute the body of the onion. I also wanted to depict the netting in one or another form – and ended up with the harlequin pattern filled out with different tones in order to create a balance in the picture but also areas of different tones and contrast.

Onions in a net

Onions in a net

I feel I succeeded to make a fairly exciting image of onions in net, and added some onion “flowers” on the leaves above ground as well as some roots below ground.

View from a window – “Tree house with tree on side”

I have for the four years living in our cottage style house looked upon the trees outside our kitchen glass doors. In particular in winter these trees –form a very interesting graphic picture with their trunks and branches. Funnily enough I have thought for a long time – “what can I make of this?” – then I got the task – and it was obvious what view I was going to explore and draw. I also for the first time decided to paint on fabric – medium-dark-grey acetate (or viscose?) lining fabric found in the depth of my basement boxes.

When I had made a line drawing of the main trunks and branches – I realized I had two choices. If turning the picture to landscape format there was a very obvious ship to develop. It did not even have to be developed – it was there.

However – in portrait format – it was a still more obvious house – an office building – a high-rise building with loads of people working there and a tree outside, oartly interfering with the building.

I painted with gouache colours on the fabric and that worked very well. The finishing touches – making windows on the building and a few office workers going up and down the stairs, as well as cars in the parking lot to the lower right of the picture – was made by ink pen and white masking fluid.

I was very content with this picture – I think there are interesting contrasts and forms as well as a harmonic mix of forms and tones. The stems and leaves on the tree on the side and in front of the building is the only motif that is still there – from the original photograph.

Tree - now an Office Building

Parking outside the building

 

Mechanical thing – “Farmer pushing cart into the big city”

I photographed the old antique kitchen scale (heritage from my grandmother – and still in use) from different angles. However when looking at it from behind – there was this obvious man or woman seen from the back pushing his cart with a load – of something. I happened to have photographed a stack of large plastic sacks of hay, outside a shop in town – and printed it and used it to load the cart. I had also found a fascinating picture of London by the photographic artist who is taking thousands of photos from above of ten big cities. I felt an interest to mix this vintage farmer on his way to the big city aspect with his cart – hence also adding some cars on their way in and out of the city. I also used newsprint (with deliberate mounting the “direction” of the print so as to achieve some perspective feeling) - as a backing for the coal drawing. Could perhaps have increased the white surfaces – perhaps not my best drawing in this assignment!