Tree Again

Some of my homework assignments from the Textile Art course I was working on last term have made their way home. It was early winter when I was working on this tree for my Drawing class. I had trouble with my sewing machine-- and my technique! The background pulled in beyond repair. In the end I decided to go with the texture. I was in such a hurry to hand everything in that I didn't get to post the final result. Here it is:

It's always interesting to look at my work after a break from it. I'm reasonably happy with this now. And the tree itself is now quite a different being. It's been through its flush of spring blossom and is now covered in red-brown leaves. 

Smoosh

I went to my "Intro to Drawing and Painting" class yesterday. The topic was "monochrome". First we did some colour mixing exercises to develop a range from darkest to lightest. Then we were asked to paint "anything" using only that range. It was at that point that I realised I've never really done any painting before. When the teacher gently critiqued my work by saying it looked as though I was trying to draw with a paint brush, I was stumped. I didn't know there was an alternative. She demonstrated. Honestly it looked as though she was moulding something huge out of soft clay! She told me to push and smoosh the paint around on the paper. She used big globs of paint and a wadded up rag to apply it. I was amazed.

Instead of going back to my "pretty flower", I had a go at pushing and smooshing the paint. I was still quite tentative, but at least I could see there was something different I could do.


















Actually I feel as though I'm doing remedial kindergarten painting. I don't know if that's a good thing. The whole process of working to develop my skills for textile art keeps getting broader with more and more possibilities and processes. Now there's paint and learning to smoosh!

Equipment

I'm planning to go to my drawing and painting class again tonight. Apparently we're going to use paint for the first time today. We've been asked to bring some simple equipment.

A plastic plate for mixing paint; a jam jar for water and a rag for cleaning up and perhaps also for applying paint--that's what we were told. And the paint will be only black and white. The complexities of colour are a topic for another day. I'll be interested to see how it goes. 

Looking Again

Despite the craziness of this week I did get to my new drawing class on Tuesday evening. I figure that maintaining a routine of good things is a helpful way to cope when life is rocky. We had been asked to bring in something to draw. On my way out the front door I picked a grevillea flower. It proved to be a worthy subject for our scaling exercises: draw it normally; draw a tiny bit in detail; draw it really big!

Here's one leaf that I saved for later.

In the class I concentrated on the flower. Now I'd like to really think about the shapes of the leaf. I continue to be amazed at how different things appear when I start to really look at them.

Wandering

I went to my first class at the Incinerator Arts Complex yesterday evening. It's an introduction to drawing and painting. I enrolled as a way of making up to myself for not doing the Textile Art course at Box Hill this semester. I'm hoping to be able to develop some skills in a more relaxed environment. So far I'm happy. Here is an exercise I did last night. The good news is "if it doesn't look like a page full of spaghetti, you're not doing the exercise right"

























The process involves looking intently at an object and not looking at the page. We were told to carefully follow our eyes with our hand marking on the page. Our eyes were supposed to wander slowly over the object. That's about it really--or as much as I could understand on a first try--I'm sure there's a lot more to the process. What amazed me was how differently I saw my object during the exercise. Previously I've been told that drawing is about "looking". This exercise somehow reset my looking process, so that I actually saw details and subtleties that I was previously unaware of. And thankfully the drawing wasn't supposed to look like anything at all, so no worries about showing it here. By the way, if you're wanting to learn more about this exercise, I think it's called "contour drawing".