After reading the brief for this exercise, I felt it was time to take stock of the course so far and consider where I am as an artist. What are my strengths? Where are my weaknesses? What areas of study could I push to further my practice? Looking back at the work I’ve produced so far, I noticed a few things. Firstly, I have erred on the realist side of things, I’ve tended to try and accurately replicate what’s in front of me. Not that this is a fault, but it is limiting to my development as an artist. I rely on reference photos too often, confining me to the view of the lens. This in turn dampens my imagination while strengthening my tendency to work realistically. I have no ambition to produce work like Tjalf Sparnaay or Robert Bechtle but I do feel I’ve achieved a reasonably good grasp of form and tone. But I don’t break free and go crazy like I used to before I began academic study. These pieces were produced a number of years ago, and although they are naive, they do demonstrate some imagination. Something I feel I’m losing and desperately want to rekindle. I can’t allow this course to stifle my natural urge to create, I need to learn to control and harness it and take it to a new level.
Next, I’m just going to say it, I fear colour. I don’t trust it, I don’t understand it, I rarely use it. This is another constraining factor of my art and something I simply can not allow to continue. Colour theory is something I’m going to have to do some serious research into. I feel comfortable with black and white, but the world around us isn’t monochrome. It’s 24-7, wall to wall, glorious technicolour. I need to stop automatically reaching for the pencil, the charcoal, or the ink pen. I need to pick the right tool for the right job. Meaning I need to expand my technique, along with my understanding of what I’m trying to convey. Only then will I grow as an artist. It reminds me very much of my University days when I studied Creative Music Technology. Effectively, I was studying how music is produced and how it’s recorded. As an 18 year old, I was of the opinion that the more ingredients you added, the better the resulting recording/song would be. But with the addition of 22 years of twenty-twenty hindsight, (not to mention the additional inches round the waist), and the accompanying experience, my opinion has changed. Your job as a musician/artist is to “serve the song”, using only the ingredients that add to the final product. Never for ego, or to show off a newly learned skill, but to make the best statement, the most succinct point.
From the drawings I had done in the previous exercise, there were a few that I wanted to develop in a piece for this exercise.
The tower stands at the highest point of Locke Park, it dominates the landscape. Surrounded by trees and a hedge, I thought with a little creative composition I could create an interesting drawing.
This drawing was part of the 360 study and there was something about the short hand way I’d handled the trees that interested me.
After a few false starts, this is my final piece, which I created in response to the brief. As you can see, I’ve borrowed ideas from my sketches, the trees have been abstracted. The tower has been simplified to it’s essential forms, I’ve gone bold with my choice of colours. Being honest, it looks a bit GCSE coursework to me. But I like that I’ve been brave and tried something out of my wheel house. The abstraction of the trees, juxtaposed with the more solid 3 dimensional “real tower” intrigues me. The idea for abstracted forms living within the same space as more realistically rendered images. Food for thought.
Anyway, time is marching and I’ve got a lot more drawing to do. I’ll be back next time to have a nice chat about the foreground, middle ground, and background of my back yard.
Happy scribbling.
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