Sculpted bones

To my surprise the next step in exploring the bones in my hand was to start sculpting them out of polymer clay. It was chance activity, I had the clay for another purpose entirely (making prints), but stuck for something to do in the studio session. They results were surprisingly satisfying. Initially I was concentrating on representing my dislocated finger:

Then I thought I would link the sculpted bones to the still swollen finger. It was strangely disturbing process. To have such a strong reminder of what had happened to the actual bones gave me a strangely physical jolt.

When I showed this image to Tony he was very struck by its potency which surprised me as I felt there was little meaning aside of my own very personal reaction. It caused me to think more about the development of really personal art. Thinking of Tracy Emin and her personal fragments that only resonate in the context of her particular history.
I decided to pursue the idea of sculpting the bones in my hand and although I only had a limited amount of clay which meant that I could not maintain a consistent colour, I did make all the bones in my right hand. Once pieced together they created another promising image:

That dislocated finger

In the  November 14th post I write about how I was pushing myself (and being pushed) towards a more personal engagement with the work I had been doing on the skull and bones. It has proved a fruitful development and it all began with that dislocated finger. Whilst in Thailand I slipped on the side of a swimming pool and dislocated my finger in an alarming way. I was taken to the local hospital where they took an X ray which I was allowed to keep:

I wanted to find ways to represent that view of my hand and its injury and thought about some of efforts to describe the bone shapes by rubbing into a charcoal field. It seemed an ideal way to capture the X ray effect, so I drew an X ray of my hand:

I then started to work on that charcoal drawing with a series of watercolour washes to try and show the way an X ray has  a ghostly shadow of your flesh and skin. The colour was not not really right, but the image did go some way to recording my experience and indeed the discomfort: and to reinforce the connection I added a fragment from the envelope that was presented to me by the Thai doctor:

The last stages of bone and skull

 Before moving onto my new developments around the hand, the impetus for which I wrote about in my last post,  I wanted to record the last few pieces of work I completed on the skull theme. I was feeling rather aimless and seemed to be seeing the skull work as a bit of a dead-end. However, looking back I now feel that there was some interesting developments in that work and I don't want to lose track of it.

I had been pleased with some of my experimentation with a range of media on one piece: it was something that had struck me about Henry Moore's drawings in the underground and indeed of the elephant skull. he layered a range of media: pencil, pastel, pen and ink and wash. At the same time, several people had reminded me of  Georgia Okeeffe's paintings of landscapes based on a skull. So, in the rather cramped circumstances of our art room (a circumstance which has indeed rather cramped my ambitions) I created a layered skull drawing which was pleasing in the way it suggested some of the rich texture of the skulls I have been looking at:

I then started to work with my soft pastels in a more expressive way. Still looking for a way to turn my skull studies into landscape. A couple of these suggested that this too was not worth abandoning totally.

Finally, I brought all this together with a longer and considered piece based on the skull that used soft pastel on rough watercolour paper, as well as a strong black ink wash to provide a contrasting background. Of course, it would not excite Tony, falling as it does at the hurdle of 'meaning' or 'malleability', but I want to allow myself at least some satisfaction in producing something that has some of the ambiguity around landscape and mortality and is, I think,  pleasing on the eye. It seems like a fitting end to a sequence of work that may be little more than a staging post for where I will eventually go with this, but still has some value in its own right.

Another tentative step forward in drawing the head

I had also missed two session of James Lloyd's 'Drawing the Head' course at the Princes' Drawing School. I was assuming that what small steps I had made in my last session would all have washed away, but to my surprise, I was a little more confident and had clearly internalized those lessons about form through light and shade.Two portraits in one evening. Still not a strong likeness but a sense of form and depth. Satisfying, although no cause for complacency!

The trouble with 'end gaming'.

I have missed a couple of sessions of the CLFA course and despite some attempts to explore ideas whilst in Wales, I am still feeling that I am wallowing around somewhat without any clear sense of where I am going. I had a bracing tutorial with Tony Hull which was at once dispiriting and encouraging. I had made an effort in my sketchbook to structure my work so far and although he was polite about my various sketches it was clear that in his eyes they were not leading anywhere worthwhile. Certainly not in the direction I had tentatively explored while in Wales with three small paintings in acrylic: each trying to extend my sketches into colour:

When I got them out to show Tony there was a barely disguised sigh and a suggestion that I put them away as they weren't leading anywhere. He's probably right although I was not wholly unhappy with what they indicated. The middle more abstract painting included a sculpted piece of polymer clay which was another idea for a possible direction.

What did catch his eye were a series of very loose water colour studies that I had done the week before and which did, I agree, seem more promising:

 These were water colour washes, with pen and ink and in some cases wax pastels. I genuinely hadn't a clue what I was trying to achieve and as a result, I suspect, actually created some images that had potential.

These caused us to talk about what I was trying to do. His main critique was that most of what I did was too governed by outcome. I was 'end gaming': trying to achieve something that I thought other people would

think looked good, rather than genuinely exploring. "The trouble with spending a lot of time trying to draw a bone is that all you can really say about it is: yes it looks like a bone (or not)." What we should be looking for are images that are more malleable: they suggest bone, but they suggest more and as a viewer you can take the image for a walk, it offers some alternative journeys. I found this very helpful. I certainly need to to find ways to let myself go and to eliminate, at this stage at least, a concern for what will look good in the sketch book or for achieving a satisfying effect that is actually nothing much more than just that. Helpful but not easy!

In subsequent conversations with my partner and son both suggested that a way forward was to find ways to put myself into the process. To find ways to connect my own lived experience with the art I am producing. There is a danger that it becomes a cliche: the lurch for the autobiographical. However, one direction this advice did suggest was to find ways to look at my own bones and as luck(!) would have it I recently dislocated my finger and had my hand X rayed. It is not a pretty sight, but it might give me a new avenue to explore: it not only connects with some lived experience but it also opens up another possibility (suggested by Ben) of exploring 'layers' of perception.

Portrait progress!

Had a much better session with James Lloyd. I asked for help! A bit of a shock to both of us. He was supportive and got me to realize the tyranny of the line in portrait drawing: there are people who can use line with real impact, but those are people who can draw. James made it clear that it was my detail and line that was holding my drawings back. What I needed to do was to concentrate on form and the best way to do that was to concentrate on light and shade. So a couple of much more convincing efforts (still looking a bit embarrassing on the wall for the crit at the end). Both heads have some body and depth. Only I will know the degree to which I had captured a likeness: truth is not much, but there are aspects that match and the over all impression is so much more convincing. Still got a mountain to climb, but in the foothills at least:

Jerwood Drawing prize. Liz Bailey's bonzai tree

Went to the Jerwood Drawing Prize exhibition. On my own as away in Bangkok for the course trip. Plenty to talk about not least the incredible range of what passes for 'drawing'. Most showed a wonderful command of the medium, but others seem to be challenging the whole notion of a drawing. The winners were, strangely given the range, very traditional drawings on a grand scale. Both displayed incredible skill and a similar degree of whimsy in the subject matter.

One drawing had special resonance as I had visited the artist, Liz Bailey's studio while she was int he middle of the drawing.In the exhibition you saw a gloriously detailed drawing of a tree some two metres in height. What is not clear is that she has scaled this up from a dead bonsai tree approximately 6" high. An inspiring feat of close observation drawing and very beautiful as well.

Here is the tree and the drawing. the tree was suspended with nylon fishing line.

 Here is the tree:

An here are the pencil sharpenings that she carefully collected by the drawing!