Overview of Year One CLFA: Sculpture

I was looking forward to sculpture because I really had no idea how I would react to it as a form. I have certainly been enjoying finding out more about sculptors and looking at sculpture. The RA did a survey of  British sculpture that was very helpful in providing a chronological context and there were some seminal pieces that really struck a chord: perhaps the Epstein Adam being the most striking (with its pronounced genitalia confronting the ornate statue of Queen Victoria). But there was also fine representations of Hepworth, Moore, Tony Cragg and Damian Hirst.

We were asked to make a clay head: I was to try and represent Adrian. The first hour of working clay was hugely satisfying. Tactile and visceral just as I had always imagined. I finished the session thinking that this was really what I wanted to do. But almost any form of sculpture is so much more than that initial tactile shaping and although I was pleased to learn about mould making and casting, I was somewhat overwhelmed by the process and felt less and less engaged as I got further away from that early enthusiastic clay work. Not surprisingly I did it all in a rush, missed a session and when finally revealed, my head snapped off at the neck. I felt it was telling me something!

Then we were asked to produce a piece of our own choosing. Again I missed a crucial session and so was left pretty much t my own devices. I would have liked to have been able to explore metalwork and welding. But instead I decided to follow my skull theme. In Wales I found a decayed sheep’s skull and created a slate box to present it. I wanted to drill out a pattern or holes to both echo the skull and allow for light rays to enter the box. I added in a  bed of natural wool and a smooth stone. The end result was pleasing and felt like a sculptural statement, but in the end was under-worked and not really thought through.  

My exposure to sculpture suffered from the usual lack of time and commitment which was always going to be the case once I had decided to plod despite the USA adventure. But even allowing for that I emerged pretty confident that it would not be a media that I would be developing.

Overview of CLFA: Multi media and Photoshop

Much of the second half of the course felt more like a traditional foundation course. We were trying out a range of media and techniques. All were interesting and I was pleased to have had the opportunity to try them, but not all of them encouraged me to incorporate them into my practice. I was also missing sessions and had virtually no time to extend anything I was doing in my own time and I suspect this diminished the quality of my engagement.

MULTI MEDIA

We had four sessions on a multi media project which was to be done in groups. The teaching was excellent with Lucinda leading the way with determination and sensitivity and pushing us into ways of expressing ourselves that did not come easy. However, despite seeing the benefits of group work , I did not feel that any of us were really happy getting to grips with these media AND operating within in group dynamic. We were asked to explore Lincolns Inn Fields as a stimulus  to create a multi media installation.

I was, as usual, disappointed by my work: finding it hard to gather useful imagery in the sketchbook walk and then getting distracted by my interest in the disused phone box. I was pleased to have spent the time constructing my phone box with its mixture of prostitute cards and legal imagery, but in the end was rather embarrassed by its crude ideology and frankly rather tacky realization. It did not fit in with the group project which after a fair amount of crossed wires turned into a rather successful presentation since we allowed our audience to interact and rearrange the shapes we had set out. But overall it taught me more about what I did not want to do than what I might develop.

PHOTOSHOP

We had a whirlwind introduction to Photoshop, which was helpful in that it confirmed that my iPad work on Brushes was as far as I wanted to go with digital art. PS is a monster as I have always known and I can see no reasons to master it. It would take up too much time and divert me from the tactile and physical mark making and colour exploration that I want to put at the centre of my practice.

A long time coming

I look back at the last post on this blog, which was November last year. Almost ten months of silence. Well there is a reason. In early November, just as I was starting slow down just a little giving me time to reflect on my course and my art, I found myself with a new and very demanding job. I was asked to lead the team that was to launch the US version of Teachers TV called Teaching Channel. I was to do the job from the UK but had to make monthly trips of a week or more to the US, mostly San Francisco. It was hugely stimulating and totally absorbing. But of course it was going to make it hard to sustain my engagement with the City Lit Fine Art Course having to miss sessions on regular basis. However, I did hang in there with the support of my classmates and Chris Hough and get through to the end. I plan to a series of posts to cover the rest of the course but in the meantime here is where you go to see the fruits of my and my wonderful team's labours as of Sept 2011. Your can check it out here

There is lots of wonderful things about the Tch site many of which had little to do with me and everything to do with the design team at Method and the tech team at Substantial as well as Candy Meyers, Marie White and Demian Entrekin among others. the other aspect which makes me proud is the outstanding quality of the programmes which were put together in record time and guided by John Richmond supported by Erin Crysdale. I am stepping back now but continue to follow the fortunes of a wonderful project.

Now BACK TO THE ART!

Session 6: Painting with Chris Hough

This was another tough exercise in starting from scratch. Another still life. Another attempt to locate and define the objects, this time in paint. And once again a dispiriting opening not just lacking in accuracy, but also weak in composition. It felt like I had learnt nothing: except, that these first cack-handed attempts were just that. Merely a first few steps on a much longer journey and steps that can be re-traced and re-taken:

 

But Chris was much more concerned with making a painting and his session was full of good advice (not that he was laying down the law, just offering us an approach: this is what I have learnt from him so far: you do need an approach and you should try and make it consistent, then adapt or try another, but not stick with what you've always done or hop about from one to the other).

Here are some of the ideas I picked up that seemed helpful:

• Try starting with a ground colour that gives you something to work from either being an opposite or a sympathetic colour to your eventual palette. Cover the paper then rub it down to give a lighter ground. In the above it was red rubbed down to a pink. 
• Then the outline drawing itself should also be in a colour that will work in the finished picture
• Once you start to put in colour 'float' in the shapes do not define them. Keep it rough. "Start loose and then tighten as you go". Also start THIN and apply colour more thickly as you go on. 
• In particular leave the white and highlights until last: they will need thicker paint. (We looked at several classic paintings and noted that the blacks were thinly applied and the highlights were laid on thick)
• Stick to your game plan! Once you settle upon an approach, stick with it. Especially in the choice of your palette. (He referenced the abstract work of Sean Scully here where he sticks to a strict set of usually muted colours, but builds up his patterns within the limits imposed).
• Use big brushes at the start, don't be obsessed with detail. It distracts from composition and colour.

But best of all he tried to get us to lay down the dark colours first and then lay the light over it. In particular with the shadows: lay shadow everywhere, then paint in the lighter patches. This counter-intuitive approach really worked and I was pleased with the way some of my shadows suddenly lifted of the paper when the light was floated in.
 

Struggled on, trying to put all this into practice and ended up with a painting that wasn't anything like as bad as I had expected throughout most of the afternoon. In the end I felt pleased with the colours and many of the shadows (it was a complex and somewhat inconsistent set of shadows).

 Certainly something to build on by way of a 'game plan.

Drawing on the iPad

I missed the first painting session as I was away in San Francisco. It was the paint mixing lesson I took a few weeks ago. However, I had become increasingly fascinated by the Brushes application on my son's iPhone and had begun to look at the art done on the iPhone and now iPad that was finding its way onto the art sites. Above all I was captivated by David Hockney's work on the iPhone. He seems to wake up each morning and does a 'painting' on his phone and sends it to a group of friends who all get a brand new Hockney before breakfast.

I was attracted to the immediacy, the rich colours and the plasticity of the process. I had a feeling it would help me to draw and paint more. So when in San Francisco I indulged myself and bought an iPad and immediately downloaded Brushes. I confess to being quickly captivated by all the aspects that had drawn me to it.

I is taking time to get used to, but generally I am enjoying the freedom, the inability to obsess with detail and the chance to float colour into anything. I also greatly appreciate the ability to layers drawings. It is starting to get me thinking about how print making might work. There is nothing special about my early efforts but they are strangely pleasing on the eye and most importantly they are encouraging me to look and draw. Here are two sketches:

 Finally, I have been importing some of my art work from the class and using the application to try out colours and new layers. Here's a charcoal drawing with some colour layers in anticipation of a lesson to come in taking our charcoal drawings and turning them into paintings.

Fifth and final drawing session with Tony Hull

We were asked to bring in a favourite object. After much thought, I opted for my original Leatherman in its leather case. Bought in 1993 in Portland Oregon, the home of Leathermen and very remarkably not lost in the interim, so a favourite of some standing. Also something that I quite liked the idea of drawing. There was a pleasing variety of other objects, but Phillip stole the show with a bottle of Teachers whiskey!

Tony asked us to scatter the objects across the floor. Then started with a blank sheet of paper and asked us each to place one of the three core shapes: triangle, circle square on the sheet where it felt right. After about ten of us had done it, the sheet looked like this:

The point was to think about how natural composition worked. Certain shapes in one area seemed to require a shape of certain size in another. Then we started to look at how vertical and horizontal lines were defined. We talked about the power of the thirds and the golden mean. Composition is about so much more: not just shape, scale and position: it is about how your eye gets drawn across and through the picture. I feel that I may intuit natural composition and my photography has taught me a lot especially about light and shade in composition, but I still do not feel confident graphically as the rest of the session proved.

Then we set about building up our own drawing by choosing some of the objects and placing them on the page. Initially thinking only about the composition, not the representation. My first efforts were predictably bland.

The Leatherman and its case featured, as well as the whiskey bottle, a corkscrew and a human dummy shape. It was peculiarly unpleasing as a composition at this stage. However, in true Tony style he encouraged us to push everything round. We consulted with each other. (the group is getting more and more supportive and engaged with each other). Eventually I managed to get things looking a little more 'composed' and with a little more tension. But as ever I was discouraged by my failure to take risks: these were still a bunch of drawings (not so small we were working on A1) laid out across the page. Others had achieved more contrast and more flow.

Once we had achieved a composition we were happy with, then we started trying to draw more accurately using the careful observation that Tony has been instilling in us. In the end I was happier with my rendering of many of my objects, but still felt dissatisfied with the overall composition. There is a little tension in the negative space between the dummy and the bottle and corkscrew is doing something. The odd abstract shape in the top right could have been more powerful and it is there that I would have liked to have done something that challenged the whole cosy set up. These objects need to interact far more dynamically and even the shadows of previous efforts fail to give it that interaction.

Despite my almost relentless sense of disappointment, I do feel that I have learnt a lot from these sessions with Tony. Drawing is hard! But it is about so much more than just making things look 'right'. The layers of a drawing, the pushing and pulling each line and each shape until it means something, that's what I will take away from this. I very much hope that I can take some these drawings into the next stage, because it was indeed the revelation that drawing can be just like painting in this regard that was the key moment for me.

Fourth Drawing Session with Tony Hull

This was a tough session. Another six hours of hard drawing only this time Tony started us off by placing a piece of paper on the floor and asking us to draw it! It was a significant agony! My sheer inability to 'see' the angles the lines, the perspective or anything was humiliating. (Reassuringly, I was not alone).


Turns out drawing a sheet of paper is indeed very testing. Tony helped by showing how to create a rectangular guide around your drawing and then to measure angels and proportions against the rectangle. Despite this and despite some basic explanation of perspective. (The sides are not parallel as I would have expected, but in fact converge towards the vanishing point), this exercise and its development into more sheets and more shapes, cruelly exposed my basic weaknesses both in seeing and then representing what I have seen. As more sheets and shapes were added my drawing became more chaotic and less accurate. By three o'clock ( a long time to be drawing sheets of paper!) I was weakening. Of course I realized that this is exactly the rigour that I need and that I need to keep challenging myself to see more analytically. To block out what I think I see and establish what is actually there.
Then just at the point when I would have chucked in the towel, Tony asked us to look at what we had and try to make a drawing out of it: something completely different. Follow your nose wherever these messy shapes suggested. So here is where I started:

And here is where I got to an hour later:

I found myself with a sort of Roy Lichtenstein pastiche:losing almost all of my original shapes (which was a pity . The real challenge of this was to adapt what you had in the first place, not remove it). I had succeeded in establishing a strong sense of direction, but nothing much else. I was disappointed in my efforts, but could see the benefit of transforming what feels like a mess into something vaguely visually interesting.
This whole session chimed with what I had been reading in Art and Fear.
Dean Melbourne mentioned this book in his blog. It is a reassuring little book which deals with just how tough it is to make decent art. Here's how it starts:

Making art is difficult. We leave drawings unfinished. We do work that does not feel like our own. We repeat ourselves. We stop before we have mastered our materials or continue on long after their potential is exhausted.

Then a few pages on:

The fear that you are only pretending to do art is the (readily predictable) consequence of doubting your own artistic credentials. . .It's easy to imagine that real artists and that they (unlike you) re entitled to feel good about themselves and their art. Fear that you are not a real artist causes you to undervalue your work.

Actually it is a reassuring book which I shall continue to dip into.