RESEARCH POINTS : DRAWING SKILLS
PART 1 : MARK-MAKING AND TONE
Project : Making marks
1.Van Gogh pen and ink drawing The drawing I picked is “Olive Trees, Montmajour” which is of an rocky outcrop with Olive Trees. Van Gogh used pencil, pen, reed pen and ink .
The reason I chose it is for the variety of marks used to evoke the landscape : strong lines and cross hatching for the rocks, stippling and dots for the foreground, multidirectional marks to show the movement in the olive trees and ground cover.
Apparently, when Van Gogh moved to Arles in 1888, he had to economise on paint for a several weeks and did instead a number of ink drawings – many of them around the hill of Montmajour.
While I liked the "Vase of Flowers in a Garden" for it's energy and how the table and vase almost lunge out at you ,it's not like most of the other work I've found onlne, apart maybe from "Garden Flowers on a Cottage Table" which has a similar focal point and perspective. Many of Raviliious other works seem to be either waterclours of his locality, such as "Beachy Head" or Chalk Paths" , illustrations from "High Street" and his war time works.
Source Freda Constable Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online.
Eric Ravilious , (1903 to 1942) born in London, was an English painter, illustrator, designer and printmaker. He attended Eastbourne School of Art and subsequently the Royal College of Art, where he studied under Paul Nash and became a close friend of Edward Bawden.
He began his working life as a muralist , but in the 1930s began painting larger watercolours.in which he used a fine stippling technique which gave light or dark features a telling role.
His landscapes and rural interiors often featured the downland and coast of southern England; Haunting and lyrical, these works show a world in suspense and often feature chalk hill figures, as in Train Landscape (c. 1939; Aberdeen, A.G.) and empty rooms (e.g. Farmhouse Bedroom, 1939; London, V&A). In 1939 he became a War Artist, and during World War II he depicted such subjects as De-iceing Aircraft (c. 1942; London, Imp. War Mus.).
He was also an outstanding wood-engraver, producing images with strong tonal contrasts and complex patterning.
He was also a designer, producing a number of a ceramic designs for Wedgwood including a celebration mug for the coronation of King Edward VII and a number of china sets. ). He also designed glass for Stuart Crystal (1934), furniture for Dunbar Hay (1936) and graphic work for advertisements for London Transport and others.
His plane disappeared on a flying patrol near Iceland in 1942, and he was officially presumed dead the following year.
Notes on Watercolour technique taken from
http://alltypesofinformation/
Water colour is a form of colour pigment ground in gum, usually gum arabic, and applied with brush and water to a painting surface, usually paper; the term also refers to an artwork executed in this medium. The pigment is ordinarily transparent but can be made opaque by blending with a whiting and in this form is known as body colour, or gouache. It can also be mixed with casein, a phosphoprotein of milk.
Watercolour can compare in range and quality with any other painting method. Transparent watercolour allows for a freshness and luminosity in its washes and for a deft calligraphic brushwork that makes it a most attractive medium. There is one basic difference between transparent watercolour and all other heavy painting mediums, its transparency. The oil painter can paint one opaque colour over another until he has achieved his preferred result. The whites are created with opaque white. The watercolourist’s approach is the complete. In essence, instead of adding in he leaves out. The white paper creates the whites. The darker accents may be applied on the paper with the pigment as it comes out of the tube or with a small amount of water mixed with it. Otherwise the colours are thinned with water. The more water in the wash, the more the paper affects the colours; for example, vermilion, a warm red, will eventually turn into a cool pink as it is diluted with more water.
The dry-brush technique, the application of the brush containing pigment but little water, dragged over the coarse surface of the paper, creates various granular effects similar to those of a crayon sketch. Whole compositions can be produced in this way. This technique may also be used over dull washes to enliven them.
Three hundred years before the Renaissance of late 18th-century English watercolourists, Albrecht Durer had predicted their technique of transparent colour washes in a groundbreaking series of plant studies and panoramic landscapes. Until the emergence of the English school, however, watercolour became a medium merely for colour tinting outlined drawings or, combined with opaque body colour to produce effects similar to gouache (see below Gouache) or tempera, was used in preliminary studies for oil paintings.
The primary pracitioners of the English method were Thomas Girtin, John Sell Cotman, John Robert Cozens, Richard Parkes Bonington, David Cox, and Constable. Their contemporary J.M.W. Turner, however, true to his unorthodox genius, added white to his watercolour and made use of rags, sponges, and knives to create unique impressions of light and texture. Victorian artists, such as Birket Foster, used a laborious technique of colour washing a monochrome underpainting, similar to the tempera-oil technique. Following the direct, vigorous watercolours of the French Impressionists and Postimpressionists, however, the medium was fully established in Europe and America as an expressive picture medium in its own right. Notable 20th-century watercolourists have been Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Dufy, and Georges Rouault; the U.S. artists Thomas Eakins, Maurice Prendergast, Charles Burchfield, John Marin, Lyonel Feininger, and Jim Dine; and the English painters John and Paul Nash, Eric Ravilious, Edward Bawden, Edward Burra, and Patrick Procktor.
In the “pure” watercolour technique, often referred to as the English method, no white or other opaque pigment is applied, colour intensity and tonal depth being built up by successive, transparent washes on wet paper. Patches of white paper are left untouched to represent white objects and to create effects of reflected light. These flecks of untouched paper create the sparkle characteristic of pure watercolour. Tonal gradations and soft, atmospheric qualities are rendered by staining the paper when it is very wet with differing proportions of pigment. Sharp accents, lines, and coarse textures are introduced after the paper has dried. The paper should be of the type sold as “handmade from rags”; this is generally thick and grained. Cockling is avoided when the surface dries out if the dampened paper has been first stretched across a special frame or held in position during painting by an edging of adhesive tape.
Project : Tone and Form
3 Odilon Redon
While I can appreciate the range of tone used in the "Two Trees" , I find it ominous and uninviting though very similar to another of his works "Tree and Stars"
(1840 to 1916). Source – Marshall Cavendish – The Great Artists
Odilon Redon was a French painter, draughtsman and printmaker and one of the key figures of Symbolism.
He was born in Bordeaux in the same year as Monet, but his career and interests were widely different. Redon resisted the Impressionist movement which he criticised for concentrating on an "external ideal”. For him the subject of art was the inner world of the imagination.
He led a retiring life, first in Bordeaux where his early life was spent in the care of an uncle on a family estate. At school he was taught drawing and the first principles of Romanticism by Stanislaus Gorin, an admirer of Delacroix.
In 1861 he met the botanist Armand Clavaud, who became a friend and mentor introducing Redon to philosophy, Hindu poetry, Greek, medieval and Indian art and the writings of Flaubert and Edgar Allen Poe.
In !864 he enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts under Gerome, but after a quarrel with Gerome, he left, renouncing his chance of a successful official career. He then turned instead to Rodolphe Bresdin whose works were characterized by strange sinister images (the Comedy of Death) and became the inspiration behind his choice of black and white as a medium, which he stuck to until
his late fifties.
He began to make detailed etchings, depicting mysterious,imaginary scenes.
During the 1860’s and ‘70s he worked alone, producing astoundingly original charcoal drawings featuring strange subjects such as severed heads plant and insects with human faces, flying creatures, skeletons and masks – many loosely derived from Romantic art and literature.
Under the encouragement of his friend flower painter Henri Fantin-Latour, he took up lithography as a means of reproducing his drawings and reaching a wider audience.
In 1879 and over he produced his first album of lithographs and over the next 20 years focussed almost exclusively on this medium, producing series after series of bizarre images.
His life underwent a remarkable change in the 1880s.
First he married Camille Falte in 1880 putting an end to his lonliness and isolation. In 1881 and 1882 he held 2 small exhibitions of his charcoal drawings, effectively beginning his public career.
Two writers responded enthusiastically to his work, recognizing a link with the new wave of decadent writers. Through them he became identified with the decadent movement
This body of work,.black and white—in charcoal drawings and lithographs. In these he developed a highly distinctive repertoire of weird subjects—strange amoeboid creatures, insects, and plants with human heads and so on, influenced by the writings of Edgar Allan Poe.
He remained virtually unknown to the public until the publication of J. K. Huysmans's celebrated novel A rebours in 1884; the book's hero, a disenchanted aristocrat who lives in a private world of perverse delights, collects Redon's drawings, and with his mention in this classic expression of decadence, Redon too became a figurehead of the movement.
During the 1890s he turned to painting and revealed remarkable powers as a colourist that had previously lain dormant. Much of his early life had been unhappy, but after undergoing a religious crisis in the early 1890s and a serious illness in 1894–5, he was transformed into a much more buoyant and cheerful personality, expressing himself in radiant colours in visionary subjects, flower paintings, and mythological scenes (the chariot of Apollo was one of his favourite themes). He showed equal facility in oils and pastel and after 1900 he carried out a number of large decorative schemes. His flower pieces, in particular, were much admired by Matisse, and the Surrealists regarded him as one of their precursors. By the end of his life he was a distinguished figure, although still a very private person.
4 Negative and Positive Space : Patrick Caulfield
He made striking use of negative space in his "White Ware" screen prints.
Images such as "Arita Flask! and "Lamp and Lung Ch'uan Ware" are stark and reduced to few elements - basically the ware and a source of light. It is the negative shapes created and how he makes the space move which makes these images so compelling to me.
(b London, 29 Jan 1936; d London, 29 Sept 2005). Source – Grove Art Online
English painter and printmaker.
He began his studies in 1956 at Chelsea School of Art, London, continuing at the Royal College of Art (1960–63), one year below the students identified as originators of Pop art. A reticent man, he remained wary of being identified with any movement but came to be associated with Pop art chiefly through his participation in the New Generation exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, in 1964.
In the early 1960s Caulfield’s painting was characterized by flat images of objects paired with angular geometric devices or isolated against unmodulated areas of colour. In Portrait of Juan Gris (1963; priv. col., see Livingstone, 1981 exh. cat., no. 5) Caulfield paid tribute to the Cubist painter, whose work, with that of other early modernists such as Léger and Magritte, set the terms for the stylization and formal rigour of his own still-lifes, landscapes and interiors. He adopted the anonymous technique of the sign painter, dispensing with visible brushwork and distracting detail and simplifying the representation of objects to a basic black outline in order to present ordinary images as emblems of a mysterious reality. He deliberately chose subjects that seemed hackneyed or ambiguous in time: not only traditional genres (e.g. Still-life with Dagger, 1963; London, Tate) but selfconsciously exotic and romantic themes (The Artist’s Studio, 1964; AC Eng) and views of ruins and the Mediterranean (View of the Bay, 1964; Lisbon, Mus. Gulbenkian).
Gradually Caulfield’s attention shifted to the architectural elements to which he had earlier made isolated reference. Inside a Weekend Cabin (1969; Manchester, C.A.G) was one of the earliest of a series of interiors atmospherically suffused with a single enveloping colour. The saturation of the entire surface with only one hue bears comparison with the monochrome paintings of Minimalism, which seem to have influenced him in this direction. Much of Caulfield’s imagery, as well as the elements of kitsch, vulgarity and bad taste in which he revelled, was taken from books published in the 1950s on interior decoration. However, he stopped well short of satire as too crude and predictable a response. Instead he used these settings to convey a subtle range of introspective and melancholy moods. He also gained a solid reputation for his screenprints, the first of which, Ruins (1964; see Robertson, 1981 exh. cat., no. 1), was commissioned by the ICA. The medium suited his taste for vivid areas of flat colour and his extreme economy of means, which seemed to confirm the similar alliance in his paintings of decorative opulence with technical austerity.
Patrick Caulfield: After Lunch, acrylic on canvas, 2.49×2.13 m, 1975…In works such as After Lunch (1975; London, Tate), Caulfield began to insert highly detailed passages in the manner of Photorealism into his characteristically stylized idiom, playing to great effect with ambiguous definitions of reality and artifice. In later works such as Still-life: Autumn Fashion (1978; Liverpool, Walker A.G.) he amplified this profusion of styles in increasingly elaborate still-lifes, analysing the conventions of 20th-century painting with wit and panache while maintaining the formal impact. Always a slow and exacting worker, he sustained a high level of pictorial invention, for example in his mural for the London Life headquarters in Bristol (1982; 6×6 m). During the 1980s he again turned to a more stripped-down aesthetic, particularly in such large paintings as The Blue Posts (2.90×2.06 m, 1989; London, Brit. Council), in which the precise disposition of only a few identifiable elements miraculously transforms an ostensibly abstract picture through the creation of a vivid sense of place.
Bibliography
Drawing towards Painting 2 (exh. cat. by A. Seymour, ACGB, 1967)
Marks on a Canvas (exh. cat. by A. Seymour, Dortmund, Mus. Ostwall, 1969), pp. 18–23
C. Finch: Patrick Caulfield (Harmondsworth, 1971)
Patrick Caulfield (exh. cat. by M. Livingstone, London, Tate, 1981)
Patrick Caulfield: Prints, 1964–81 (exh. cat. by B. Robertson, London, Waddington Gals, 1981)
Patrick Caulfield: Paintings, 1963–1992 (exh. cat., essay M. Livingstone, London, Serpentine Gal., 1992–3)
For further bibliography see Pop art.
Marco Livingstone
Project : Using Texture
5 Max Ernst ( 1891 to 1976) – Frottage (Source Grove Art Online)
Ernst achieved a comparable level of refinement in the frottage technique. The drawings for Histoire naturelle were made by placing sheets of paper over different objects such as floorboards and leaves, and rubbing with a stick of graphite. Through precise selection, combination, control of texture and some discreet additions, he was able to build up delicate, surprising images of fantasy landscapes, plants and creatures. He adapted this fundamentally simple technique to painting in the form of grattage, by which textures and patterns were made through simultaneously rubbing and scraping off layers of paint. Representational forms were then extracted from the whole by means of overpainting.
Decalcomania was another way of achieving similar results. Rich, unpredictable patterns were obtained by either taking an impression from, or sponging, layers of liquid paint: figurative motifs were then developed by overpainting. In Europe after the Rain (see fig. above) the basic division of sky and earth was achieved by painting over the sky area entirely. The exposed sections of decalcomania have been patterned using different materials and worked up by hand to represent vegetation, rock and a number of encrusted, mutilated human forms. The idea behind the technique, using chance textures to suggest forms and images, is similar to that of his early collages. All of Ernst’s technical methods had the same goal of evading conventional expression of authorial intention. In his theoretical texts of the 1930s he equated these practices with the concept of ‘automatism’, which Breton had stated in 1924 to be the touchstone of Surrealism.
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| The Whole Town |
. During 1925 the Surrealist group, which had been officially launched by André Breton’s first Manifeste du surréalisme—poisson soluble (1924), was engaged in a debate about the status of painting in the movement and the possibility of applying the practice of automatism to picture-making. Partly in response to this, Ernst developed the technique of frottage, which he claimed to be a form of automatism; it first appeared in Histoire naturelle, a series of 34 frottage drawings that he exhibited and published in 1926 (Eng. edn, London, 1972, 2/1986). For several years he employed variations on the technique in most of his paintings, notably the Forest series. These paintings, in which natural forms predominate, revealed his sense of affinity with Romanticism and with certain of his German predecessors, particularly Albrecht Altdorfer and Caspar David Friedrich (e.g. the Great Forest, 1927; Basle, Kstmus.). Mac Ernst invented new methods, among them frottage – making rubbings with graphite over textured surfaces, then using the rubbing as a starting point for an image. Eg The Entire City which uses strips of frottage for the main body of the image.
Max Ernst and other Surrealist artists incorporated such rubbings into their paintings by means of collage. Source MoMA
Note : A member of the Dada movement, in 1919 he founded the Cologne branch. Dadaists were disillusioned by the atrocoties of WWI and challenged established art forms with irrational and imaginative concepts in their work
PART 2 : OBSERVATION IN NATURE
Project : Exploring Coloured Media
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| Hands of an Apostle |
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| A Hare |
6 Artists exemplifying mastery of detailed drawing
(i) Albrecht Durer
While I love the richness of Durers portraits eg "Self Portrait" and major religious works such as "the Adoration of the Magi" and "The Four Apostles", I can really appreciate his painstaking attention to detail and senstivity to his subject in works such as "A Hare","the Large Piece of Turf" and "Hands of an Apostle". His engravings show his genius in using just black line to create rich textured works.
Albrecht Durer:
( 1471 to 1528)Source – Marshall Cavendish – The Great Artists
Durer was the great German artist of the Northern Renaissance. He worked in many different media , producing delicate watercolours of animals and plants as well as dramatic woodcuts and engravings. His art was rooted in the Northern tradition but strongly influenced and shaped by visits to Italy and contact with the Renaissance.
He was born in on 21 May, 1471, the third of eighteen children born to his father, a goldsmith from Hungary who had married his masters daughter.. After leaving school, he studied as a goldsmith for three years in his fathers workshop but his heart was set on painting.
By age 15, he was apprenticed to the Nuremberg painter Michael Wolgemut, a master of the old late medieval style, with whom he stayer for 3 years.Then, in 1490, he set off on his “bachelor year” travelling through the Holy Roman Empire and arriving 2 years later in Alsace, where he hoped to meet Martin Schongauer, the greatest German engraver of the previous generation. Unfortunaltely Schongauer had died just a few month previously, but durer stayed on, working with Schongauer’s brother and learning the technical aspects of the engravers art.
In 1493, his father arranged a match for him with Agnes Frey, the daughte of a local coppersmith and in 1494, Durer returned to Nuremberg to be married. Within months, Durer was off on his first journey to Italy, using money borrowed from the family of his friend, Willibald Pirckheimer.
He visited Pirckheimer who was finishing his studies at the universityin Pavia and through him was introduced to the work of the italian Humanists.
Venice was the highlight of his trip and here he set to learn all he could from the italian masters, studying the science of perspective, the portrayal of the nude and copying the work of master engravers.
He returned home the following year determined to transplant to rudiments of the Italian Renaissance to Germany.
Over the following years he built on what he had learnt in Italy and produced a remarkable variety of work and he was still in his twenties when he established himself as the leading artists in Nuremberg,being recognised as a skilled portraitist.
.He had also a facination with the natural world and showed painstaking attention to detail, drawing endless studies . He said “ the tiniest detail should be done skilfully and as well as possible…nor should the slightest wrinkles and puckers be omitted” and believed that “ truly art is contained within nature and he who can seize it has got it”.
His watercolours of “A Hare”, “The Large Piece of Turf” and “The Heron” are all highly detailed yet sensitive.
However it was his woodcuts and increasingly his engravings which were the basis for his international reputation.These have a great variety of tones and textures with subtle gradations of light and shade but they also express an unprecedented range of feeling as exemplified by “The Knight, Death and the Devil” and “Melencolia I”.
(ii) Charles Mahoney
From the work illustrated " Sunflowers, Convolvulus and Opium Poppy", you can sense Charles Mahoneys interest in botany and see his careful observation of negative space. Other works such as "Polygonum Amplexicaute" and "Giant Sunflowers" show similar preoccupations. While another of his works, "Ambleside, Roof Top View" is not a botanical subject, it shows the same attention to detail and use of negative space.
( 1903 to 1968 Source – Liss Fine Art)
Born Cyril Mahoney in London, he was later re- christened Charlie by Barnett Freedman, a fellow student at the Royal College of Art, which he attended from 1922 to 1926, having previously studied for a period at Beckenham School of Art.
He had a reputation as a conscientious teacher and was at the Royal College from 1928 to 1953 where he was noted for his concern for academic discipline. From 1954 to 1963 he taught at the Byam Shaw School of Drawing and Painting and from 1961 to 1968 at the Royal Academy Schools
He painted murals at Morley College 1928 to 1930 with his colleagues Eric Ravillous and Edward Bawden (which sadly were later destroyed during World War II). This work led to later murals at Brockley School, Kent and at Oxford.
He also did oil paintings , many religious in nature and is probably best known for the painting Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden (1936).
He was a skilled botanist with many of his drawings depicting his garden.
Mahoney is now increasingly recognised as an influential figure alongside his better-known contemporaries, Bawden and Ravillious
Project : Detailed Observation
7. Drawings from artists working in contrasting ways
Sketchy Expressive Style - "Weary" by Whistler.
This image shows a woman reclining in what is probably a chair. While the features on her face are detailed enough to be expressive of her weariness, the rest of her form is loosely drawn using sketchy lines which suggest (eg the hands) rather than define .We are given no clues to where or who she might be through detail of the background or her clothing.
Tight rigourous work – "Attending to the Bride" by Caraud
This image shows a young woman being prepared for her wedding. While there is no background evident, there is considerable detail about the subjects down to the crook of a finger, the fold of a garment and the pattern on the bride's dress
Project : Drawing Fruit and Vegetable in Colour
8 Ben Nicholson
I really like the “Four Pears” image in the manual, particularly the simplicity of the line and form, how the shapes overlap and interact to create interesting negative shapes, the palatte used and the suggestion of a landscape.
While this work was done in 1955, it resonates in later works such as "Two Bottles and a Glass" (1967) and "Mugs in Landscape" (1981)
(1894 to 1982) Source Duncan Robinson and Judith Collins. "Nicholson." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online.
Ben Nicholson was an English painter and sculptor.
Born in Buckinghamshire in 1894, his family moved to London in 1894.
He trained as an artist at the Slade School of Art from 1910 to 1911 but from 1912 to 1918 was abroad most of the time.
Up to 1920, he painted in a traditional manner, however following his marriage to artist Winifred Roberts in 1920 he committed to modernism , a concept of art in which strength of expression was valued over accuracy of description and integrity and freshness of formal invention were more highly valued than practised facility in deliniation.
He made visits to Paris where he learned first hand the typical interests of the modernists.
Following an exhibition in 1923 with Winifred Nicholson, in 1924 he was invited the join the 7 & 5 society and in 1926 was made chairman.
By 1924, his interest in cubism became evident in his work and that year was when he first experimented withabstract painting. However most his characteristic works of the 1920s are table top still lives organised with deceptive simplicity and landscapes painted in Tucino in Switzerland, Cummberland and Cornwall. These works had delicate tonal relationships and were explicit about the artificiality of their facture.
In the 1930s, Nicholson visited France where he encountered the work of artists from many countries who had based themselves in Paris during the 1920s. At this time his work changed with a temporary withdrawal from landscape subjects an increasing interest in non-figurative themes and a sense of avant –garde. He did a series of experimental works , culminating in December 1933 in his first abstract relief.
In 1939, Nicholson and his second wife, Barbara Hepworth, moved to Cornwall, where he began to reintroduce naturalistic colour into his reliefs and revisited his earlier still life and landscape themes though now organised as flat and hard edged planes.His typical composition of this period was a small crystalline cluster based on a practised still lefe motif which he edged either towards abstraction through a flattening of the planes or towards naturalism by the addition of a landscape background.
Project : Drawing Animals
9. Depiction of animals – Leonardo and Durer
Science in the Art of the Italian Renaissance II: Leonardo Da Vinci’s Representation of Animals in His Works
By Douglas D. Kane
The Ohio Journal of Science, Vol.102, No.5 (2002)
Abstract: Leonardo Da Vinci combined science and art in a number of his works and studies. This combination of science and art is very evident in the depiction of animals in his works. Leonardo studied both the anatomy and physiology of animals in order to render them with scientific precision. This included dissections of numerous animals and studies on their movements in nature. Leonardo Da Vinci, unified science and art, as is evident in the realistic and scientific depiction of animals in his works.
During the 15th century depictions of the animal world were often imbued with a complex symbolism, most notably in the sporting scenes painted by such artists as Paolo Uccello (e.g. Hunt in the Forest, c. 1460–70; Oxford, Ashmolean). Gradually, however, an increasing accuracy and realism began to appear in the treatment of animal subjects in the Bestiary, in the drawings of Pisanello, in the works of Leonardo da Vinci and in Dürer’s watercolours and woodcuts.Source : Grove Art Online
10. Anatomical drawings of Stubbs and Skeletal structure of cat
Stubbs : source Grove Art Online
English painter, draughtsman and printmaker
His study of anatomy enabled him to paint horses, dogs and wild animals with unsurpassed truth to nature, while his innate sense of design enabled him to achieve graceful, rhythmic compositions. His contemporary reputation was chiefly based on portraits of horses and dogs; but he also painted human portraits, conversation pieces and imaginative subjects with animals. His keen empirical instinct led him to experiment with enamel painting and to the perfection of a fastidiously beautiful mixed-method printmaking technique…
It was probably in 1756 that Stubbs began intensive study of the anatomy of the horse; this had first been planned during his period in the anatomy school of York Hospital but was delayed until he could afford to work on it single-mindedly. For about 18 months he worked in a farmhouse at Horkstow, Lincs, near tanneries that would supply him with dead horses. He devised tackle for hauling them into lifelike attitudes, after which he proceeded to strip away layer after layer of skin and muscle to the skeleton, making drawings and notes at every stage. His only assistant in this arduous work was Mary Spencer, his common-law wife. Stubbs had undertaken this research to gain the knowledge needed to paint living horses; significantly, when he published The Anatomy of the Horse (1766), he styled himself on its title-page ‘George Stubbs. Painter’. The 42 surviving drawings (London, RA) related to The Anatomy of the Horse include working drawings, made at Horkstow from the hanging cadaver, and meticulous, gravely beautiful finished drawings; from these Stubbs engraved 18 plates (with key plates) for publication, achieving a masterly printmaking technique.
Stubbs settled in London probably during 1758. His early fame spread chiefly through his drawings for The Anatomy of the Horse, which were seen by many noblemen (mostly members of the recently founded Jockey Club) who were keenly interested in breeding and racing horses. They quickly perceived that Stubbs could depict their horses with an individuality and underlying knowledge far in advance of the repetitive angularity of such earlier artists as James Seymour and John Wootton
In this picture, Mares and Foals under an Oak Tree circa 1773 you can clearly see how the anatomical drawings informed his finished work, with Stubbs staying true to the proportions, the strength and form of the body and hindquarters, the graceful curves of the neck and hind legs and the head.
Skeletal structure of a cat…source : Cathealthdetective.com
Cat bone structure allows it to twist with part of the body going in an opposite direction to the other. The beige color is her stomach area.
Cat bone structure ...some cat info to help in understanding the cat bones framework and skeleton. Cat Health and the Cat's Bone Structure go hand in hand by promoting your cat's life-long wellness. Cats are such agile and flexible critters that we often forget they have bones that are anchoring all that muscle.
The cat bone structure is also providing a framework around the vital organs while manufacturing blood cells and stockpiling important minerals. By understanding how the cat bone structure handles all those essential tasks helps you appreciate their importance to your cats health.
The cat's bones are approx. 1/3 protein (primarily collagen i.e. fingernails) and 2/3 minerals (calcium & phosphorus)and a few cells scattered throughout. The collagen fibers form a net that the minerals attach to during bone formation (calcification). The combination of hard minerals and pliable protein gives the bone both the compressional strength to stand up under pressure and the tensile strength to bend without breaking....much like reinforced concrete with its mixture of hard cement and flexible wire.
Your cat's bones also contain soft bone marrow, a collection of fibrous tissue, cells, and fat. The fat stores energy, and certain marrow cells make your cat's blood. A cat's red blood cells last only about 3 months, and some of the white blood cells survive only a few hours so to keep up, a cat's bone marrow manufactures hundreds of thousands of blood cells per second.
The cat bone structure is always under construction. Like remodeling your house, a cats bones continuously reshape themselves...adding tissue in some areas and removing it from others. Modified white blood cells called osteoclasts (bone breakers) chew tunnels through old bone while smaller bone cells, the osteoblasts (bone buds) lay down new material. This remodeling tends to be faster at the end of the bone near the joint (epiphysis) than in the bone's shaft (diaphysis).
One of the main advantages of this process is that it eliminates old tissue that may be losing its resilience. A cat that is actively running and jumping is likely to have dense bones, whereas a couch-potato cat...whose bones are rarely under pressure...may be more delicate. By continually reshuffling the mineral components in bone, remodeling also helps maintain an adequate calcium supply in the blood. Your cat needs some of the calcium released during this process to send nerve impulses, operate muscles, and form blood clots. Most of your cat's total calcium...about 99 percent...stays in the cat bone structure.
Cats have a thick skull composed of about 29 different bony parts. The feline collarbone (clavicle) is a mere sliver with no attachment to other bones, which explains why cats can squeeze their shoulders through tight spaces. Where bones meet, a smooth articular cartilage cushions the bones and keeps them from rubbing against each other. Synovial fluid within the joint capsule lubricates the moving parts like motor oil in an engine.
Cats have a loosely jointed wrist (carpus) which can rotate inward (supinate). This comes in handy when swatting at prey or scampering up a tree. There are two major bone types: compact bone and spongy bone. Compact bone is sturdy but slow growing; spongy bone grows more quickly. Bone marrow comes in two main varieties: red marrow lies in the end of the bone and produces blood cells; yellow marrow resides in the center of the bone and stores fat.
The bones in the feline back (thoracic and lumbar vertebrae) have slightly looser joints than those of many other animals, which enables cats to twist around completely while falling...and land with all four feet on the ground.
Cats, on average, have 244 bones (about 40 more than we do). Many of the extras are in the cat's tail which has 19-28 vertebrae while our tailbone only has 4. The number of tail bones (caudal vertebrae) varies from cat to cat. The tailless Manx has fewer than 5. The cat also has 3 more vertebrae in its back than we do. That's why your cat is so good at stretching, twisting and curling into impossible positions and small spaces.
Cats are fortunate that their bones rarely suffer from congenital malformations or disease and they seldom break a bone except when they are hit by a car. They are not invincible.
Source : Wikipedia
Cats have seven cervical vertebrae like almost all mammals, thirteen thoracic vertebrae (humans have twelve), seven lumbar vertebrae (humans have five), three sacral vertebrae (humans have five because of their bipedal posture), and, except for Manx cats, twenty-two or twenty-three caudal vertebrae (humans have three to five, fused into an internal coccyx). The extra lumbar and thoracic vertebrae account for the cat's enhanced spinal mobility and flexibility, compared to humans. The caudal vertebrae form the tail, used by the cat as a counterbalance to the body during quick movements. Cats also have free-floating clavicle bones, which allows them to pass their body through any space into which they can fit their heads.[11]il1
PART 3 : DRAWING OUTDOORS
Project : Landscape Drawing
(i) Different Artist's depiction of Landscape.
Albrecht Durer’s depiction of landcapes were true to life representations of the natural world around him. From 1494 to 1495, he went on a visit to Italy and recorded his impression of many scenes along the way in a series of watercolours eg Castle and Town of Arco is a realistic depiction of the area with a the rugged landscape leading to the castle perched on a rock escarpment.
In “The Nativity” he depicted an old disused farmyard, rendering in truth the cracked plaster, broken tiles and wall and ramshackle roof which form the backdrop for the Nativity scene. This is no romanticized version of things and yet I feel the simplicity and peacefulness are very compelling.
Claude Lorrain’s landscapes were different in that they were an idyllic representation of classical paradises: while he realistically represented nature, pure landscape was thought to be lacking in moral seriousness, so he also included classical elements and mythological themes, infusing them with poetic light
His sketches show that he had was a master at realistically representing nature, but for his finished pictures…”he selected only such motifs as he considered worthy of a place in a dreamlike vision of the past, and he dipped it all in a golden light or silvery air which appear to transfigure the whole scene” (The Story of Art ..E. H Gombrich)
In Landscape with the Marriage of Isaac and Rebekah, the tiny figures celebrate in a glade to the fore of a classical landscape while in “The Judgement of Paris”, while the figures are more to the fore, it is the beauty of the trees and the landscape flooded with golden light that draws my eye.
LS Lowry’s landscapes are different again in that he doesn’t aim for topographical accuracy. His aim is to record an industrial society, where people lived in the shadows of the great mills with ever decreasing control over their own lives.
His industrial landscapes are stylised simplified depictions of what he saw, omitting such details as bricks on buildings, shadows, cars.
His people are stick like figures, dwarfed by the industrial landscape around them and while there may be crowds, the figures still seem solitary.
He very effectively used a restricted palette of 3 colours : vermilion, yellow ochre and prussian blue on predominantly light backgrounds, having observed that “city streets are in fact more white than black”
Lowry considered 'The Pond' to be his finest industrial landscape and it contained many of the features familiar in his work; tiny figures, numerous mills with smoking chimneys, terraced houses and in the middle distance, the Stockport Viaduct.
There is lots of activity in the scene, with his 'matchstick' people streaming in all directions both on the streets and on the water
This is not a depiction of an actual scene as he witnessed it. As he wrote in a letter to The Tate who bought the painting… 'This is a composite picture built up from a blank
canvas. I hadn't the slightest idea of what I was going to put in the canvas when I started the picture but it eventually came out as you see it. This is the way I like working best'.
(ii) Pentimenti and Restatements
I’ve had trouble getting information on this…none of the art books I had listed referrerences to either. In the end had to resort to the Wikipedia extract below
(Note: I later came across some through the exhibition "Leonardo Da Vinci - Painter at the Court of Milan" see Recommended Reading for Part 4)
Extract from Wikipedia…
A pentimento (plural pentimenti) is an alteration in a painting, evidenced by traces of previous work, showing that the artist has changed his mind as to the composition during the process of painting. The word derives from the Italian pentirsi, meaning to repent.
Significance
Pentimenti may show that a composition originally had an element, for example a head or a hand, in a slightly different place, or that an element no longer in the final painting was originally planned. The changes may have been done in the underdrawing of the painting, or by the visible layers of paint differing from the underdrawing, or by the first painted treatment of the element having been over-painted.
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| The Alnorfini Portrait |
Some pentimenti have always been visible on the final painting with careful inspection; others are revealed by the increasing transparency that some paint acquires after several centuries. Others, especially in the underdrawing, can only be seen with modern methods such as X-rays and infra-red reflectograms and photographs. These are able to record photographically some pigments, depending on their chemical composition, which remain covered by later paint layers. For example white lead, a common pigment, will be detected by X-ray, and carbon black underdrawings can often be seen with great clarity in infra-red reflectograms.[1] These methods have greatly expanded the number of pentimenti art historians are aware of, and confirmed that they are very common in the works of many old masters, from Jan van Eyck onwards.
The Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck, National Gallery, London 1434. Among other changes, his face was higher by about the height of his eye, hers was higher, and her eyes looked more to the front. Each of his feet was underdrawn in one position, painted in another, and then overpainted in a third. These alterations are seen in infra-red reflectograms.
The face of the woman in the image that The Old Guitarist is painted over. These marks would not usually be described as pentimenti as the subjects are totally different
Pentimenti are considered especially important when considering whether a particular painting is the prime version by the original artist, or a second version by the artist himself, or his workshop, or a later copyist. Normally secondary versions or copies will have few if any pentimenti, although this will not always be the case. See the discussion of this question in the case of The Lute Player by Caravaggio. Like Rembrandt, Titian and many other masters, Caravaggio seems rarely to have made preliminary drawings, but to have composed straight onto the canvas. The number of pentimenti found in the work of such masters naturally tends to be higher.
Marks revealing a totally different subject, for example in The Old Guitarist by Picasso, are not usually described as pentimenti - the artist has abandoned his earlier composition to begin a new one. In cases where a composition has been changed by a later painter or restorer, marks showing the original composition would not be described as pentimenti either - it is necessary that the original painter has changed his mind.
(iii) Challenges of Working in Series with the Landscape.
In France, in the second half of the 19th Century, a group of artists, who later were known as the Impressionists, revolted against the artificial representation of nature in official art - studio paintings based in convention.
They believed that nature should be painted as seen and observed and painted from life. They wished “to seek truth in nature itself, rather than in the studio 1”
Indeed, Claude Monet urged his friends to abandon the studio altogether and only paint when faced with the “motif” or landscape. He took on the challenge himself in his series paintings, where he observed the same subject in different weather conditions and at different times of the day or season.
This new approach resulted in paintings of great vibrancy and vigour but also involved inherent challenges.
Firstly, the interplay between light and shade was very different outdoors to what was experienced in studio: in the outdoors there could be harsh contrasts and many levels and tone of shadow due to reflected light. The artists found that the dark shadows traditionally used to model form rarely occur in the sunlight and open air and so they deliberately used blurred outlines to depict what they saw.
Entrée du village de Voisins (1872) Camille Pisarro
They also found that observing nature in the open was less about observing objects with specific forms and colours, but rather about experiencing a bright medley of tints which the eye and ultimately the mind made sense of. To give truth to what they saw, they abandoned the old method of mellow shading and came up with “ a revolution in the rendering of colour
2” where they used dashes of colour to mimic the optical effects of the scene as exemplified in Monet’s
Impression, Sunrise
Pissarro explained the technique of painting outdoors as follows
”Work at the same time upon sky, water, branches, ground, keeping everything going on and equal basis and unceasingly rework until you have got it. Paint generously and unhesitatingly, for it is best not to lose the first impression.” Rewald, John. The History of Impressionism, Harry Abrams, (1990) p. 458
The rapidly changing light was itself a challenge with the “motif” changing sometimes from minute to minute. This left little time for mixing and layering paints : instead they were applied straight to the canvas in rapid strokes, less concerned with the detail than with capturing the overall impact or impression of the scene.
Regatta at
Argenteuil Claude Monet. This painting shows Monet’s use of large brushstrokes of pure bright colour in capturing the scene and the ever changing light on water.
Monet often worked a number of canvases simultaneously and sometimes, as happened for “Women in the Garden”, he suspended work until the light adequately matched that of the previous session
Women in the Garden Claude Monet
The logistical challenges of painting outdoors were not insignificant: how to have a suitable base to paint from with the right materials to hand and ideally some protection from the elements ? Monet had a boat fitted out as a studio and also used a group of children to carry his various canvases and materials when he went abroad to paint.
Edouard Manet's Monet working on his boat
1 The Impressionists and their Art Russell Ash
2. The Story of Art, E. H. Gombrich
(iv) Plotting space through composition and structure : Claude Lorraine and Turner
Claude Lorrain is one of the greatest exponents of landscape painting of the 17th century. He specialised in ideal-landscapes, a traditional form of scenic painting that aims to present an idyllic view of nature which is even more beautiful and harmonious than nature itself. This form of landscape art is governed by classical concepts, and the picture often features classical ruins and pastoral figures in classical dress.
Apart from a short visit to Germany and France from 1625 to 1627, Claude Lorrain spent his whole working life in Italy, and his art should be examined in the context of the Roman school of the classical Baroque style of art. Indeed, along with Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), he was one of the foremost exponents of the classical idiom within Baroque painting.
Claude's paintings of landscape relate to major concerns of 17th-century Italian art - the study of nature and the exploration of light. His achievements in these fields rank him with the greatest of his contemporaries. He restricted his investigation of those themes to landscape painting, unlike other pioneers such as Rubens, Rembrandt, and Nicolas Poussin for whom this was only one aspect of their approach. Claude radically extended the concept of landscape, giving it historical significance without sacrificing his sensibility to effects of nature. In doing so, he further developed the classical tradition of landscape painting which had evolved in Italy since the Renaissance.
Biography
There are two sources for the life of Claude: biographies by Joachim von Sandrart (Academia Artis Pictoriae, 1683) and by Filippo Baldinucci. Sandrart (1606-88) was a contemporary of Claude during his early years in Italy. He was one of the many Northern artists who flocked to Rome in the early 17th century and with whom Claude was initially associated. Sandrart accompanied Claude on many of those expeditions in the countryside around Rome that remained his greatest inspiration. His biography is particularly valuable for its firsthand account of Claude's working method - especially of the studies from Nature which form the basis of Claude's landscape art. Baldinucci (1624-96), of a generation later than Claude's, obtained most of his information from the artist's nephew. His is a more professional type of biography, detailed and objective, but less circumstantial. Both tended to stress the supposed naivety of the painter, but the modern view more justly appreciates the intellectual content of his art and the seriousness of purpose of this careful and conscientious artist.
Early Life
Two traditions exist about Claude's early training (he was the third of five sons). Sandrart claimed that he was originally apprenticed to a pastry cook; Baldinucci claimed that he began in the studio of his elder brother, a wood engraver in Strasbourg.
Classical Landscape Under Agostino Tassi
However, his significant training began in Italy where he had arrived by 1615. He may have worked for the German painter Gottfried Wals in Naples for the first two years. The first certain evidence is his apprenticeship to Agostino Tassi (1580-1644) in Rome in 1618. He stayed with this artist until 1625. Tassi was a major influence on the formation of Claude's style. As a decorative landscape painter working predominately in fresco, his art was firmly based on the classical traditions of landscape. It used the elements of landscape and coast scenes, with pastoral, biblical, or mythlogical figures, architecture and shipping. All these themes are to be found later in the work of Claude.
One must remember that in 17th century Counter-Reformation Rome, the philosophical centre of Italian art and a city still strongly influenced by the high-mindedness of Renaissance art, landscape as an independent subject was not taken seriously. Ranked four out of five in the Hierarchy of the Genres, it lacked the aesthetic and ethical value of the top painting genres - History Painting and Portraiture. To overcome this, landscape artists like Claude injected mythological narrative and noble themes to their pictures, in order to add extra seriousness. See also Adam Elsheimer (1578-1610).
Recognition
After his return to Italy in 1627 Claude received commissions for frescos in the Palaces of certain High Churchmen in Rome. However, he quickly abandoned this medium in favour of easel painting. His patrons remained drawn from aristrocatic circles - the Medici, Cardinal Bentivoglio, Pope Urban VIII, Philip IV of Spain. In this he differed from his contemporary, Poussin, whose paintings were generally commissioned by the intellectual bourgeoisie.
First Period: Seascapes, Landscapes
In his first period, up to the 1640s, Claude produced many seascapes and landscapes which greatly developed the rather schematic compositions of the landscapes of Tassi and Paul Bril (1554-1626). He succeeded in connecting the planes of his compositions by subtle aerial gradations which achieved real unity of atmosphere. His landscapes are suffused with light - a result of his observations of nature, also evidenced in the many studies he made in the open air. He was the first to attempt to depict the sun on canvas and to explore its effects as accurately as possible.
Second Period: Greater Emphasis on Mythological Elements
In his second period, from the 1640s until his death, Claude's naturalism is increasingly affected by a classical humanist feeling. This derives from his study of the art of Domenichino (1581-1641) and of Annibale Carracci (1560-1609), especially as seen in the latter's contributions to frescoes in the Palazzo Aldobrandini, Rome (c.1604). His artistic purpose became more ambitious with the inclusion of specific subjects drawn from Classical mythology or the Bible. His compositions were more posed and complicated than the earlier pastorals, and can be considered as fully historical: the form of the landscape depends directly on the significance of the subject matter, and the figures play an integral part in the composition. This mature style is brilliantly represented by pictures such asLandscape with Dancers (1669; Hermitage museum, Leningrad) and View of Carthage (1676; Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg) in which Claude has manipulated the figures and the scenery with great dramatic effect.
In search of a more severe, epic style, Claude turned for inspiration to Virgil's Aeneid which increasingly suited his mood towards the end of his life. The last paintings achieve a supreme blend of poetic feeling and decorative skill equal in sublimity to that of the Classical poet. There is no perceptible falling off in technical ability or his sublime use of colour tones. The acceptance of the qualities of Mannerism now allow his very personal handling of his figures to be recognized as an essential ingredient of his art, and not as the failing they had for long been considered. This is quite evident in his last painting, Ascanius Shooting the Stag of Silvia (1682; Ashmolean Museum, Oxford), painted in his 82nd year.
Works
Throughout his career, Claude kept a careful record of his compositions and his patrons in the so-called Liber Veritatis (Book of Truth). This is a chronological series of drawings in pen and ink of his major commissions and are as remarkable an achievement as his paintings. About 50 percent are studies from nature. Drawn freely in chalk or pen ink and wash, they are more spontaneous than his paintings or studio drawings and comprise a collection of informal motifs - trees, ruins, waterfalls, parts of meadows or riverside views in sunlight - that Claude witnessed on his sketching expeditions in the Italian Campagna.
Claude's vision of the Classical world was quite different in conception to that of Poussin, the artist who worked most closely to him during his life. The latter's landscapes are intellectual constructs that depend directly on the imagination of the artist. The landscapes of Claude, while no less ideal, are rooted in his observation of the natural world. It was this quality that made his art of such consistent appeal to later generations, especially to those who fell under the spell of the Classical terrain of Italy. In 18th-century England this admiration was translated by the aristocracy and landed gentry into real terms in the Classical arrangement of their parks. But above all, he remained a painter of nature, which was why the great John Constable - one of the key figures in the English School of Landscape painting - described Claude Lorrain as "the most perfect landscape painter the world ever saw". Claude was also much admired by Dutch Realists likeAelbert Cuyp.
Paintings by Claude Lorrain
One of the greatest of 17th century Old Masters, works by Claude Lorrain hang in many of the world's best art museums, as can be seen from the following list of his major canvases.
- Landscape with Cattle and Peasants (1629) Philadelphia Museum of Art.
- Landscape with Merchants (1630) National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.
- Landscape with Goatherd (1636) National Gallery, London.
- The Ford (1636) Metropolitan Museum, New York.
- Port with Villa Medici (1637) Uffizi Gallery, Florence.
- Finding of Moses (1638) Prado Museum, Madrid.
- Pastoral Landscape (1638) Minneapolis Institute of Arts.
- Seaport (1639) National Gallery, London.
- Seaport at Sunset (1639) Louvre, Paris.
- View of Campagna (1639) British Royal Art Collection, London.
- Embarkation of Saint Paula Romana at Ostia (1639) Prado Museum, Madrid.
- The Embarkation of St. Ursula (1641) National Gallery, London.
- Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba (1648) National Gallery, London.
- The Disembarkation of Cleopatra at Tarsus (1642) Louvre, Paris.
- The Trojan Women Setting Fire to their Fleet (1643) The Met, NY.
- View of Tivoli at Sunset (1644) San Francisco Museum of Art.
- Mercury Stealing Apollo's Oxen (1645) Galleria Doria-Pamphilj, Rome.
- Landscape w. Cephalus and Procris reunited by Diana (1645) London.
- The Judgement of Paris (1645-46) National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.
- Sunrise (1646-47) Metropolitan Museum, New York.
- Landscape with the Marriage of Isaac & Rebekah (1648) London.
- Landscape with Paris and Oenone (1648) Louvre, Paris.
- View of La Crescenza (1648-50) Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
- Landscape with Dancing Figures (1648) Galleria Doria-Pamphili, Rome.
- View of La Crescenza (1648-50) Metropolitan Museum, New York.
- The Rest on the Flight into Egypt (1651-61) The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.
- Landscape with Acis and Galatea (1657) Gemaldegalerie, Dresden.
- Landscape with Apollo and Mercury (1660) Wallace Collection, London.
- Coast Scene with the Rape of Europa (1667) Royal Collection, London.
- The Expulsion of Hagar (1668) Alte Pinakothek, Munich.
- Seaport (1674) Alte Pinakothek, Munich.
- Ascanius Shooting the Stag of Sylvia (1682) Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
PART 4 : DRAWING FIGURES :
Project : Self Portrait
l really like Van Gogh's Self Portrait 1889.
It gives me a real sense of his person. It was one of his last and seems to reflect his inner turmoil: his face is gaunt and strained and his brow furrowed. His jacket merges into the swirling background which hints at his tumultuous thoughts.
There is great energy in the thickly applied paint and vigorous brushstrokes and the blue and green palette contrasts strongly with the red hair and beard.
Rembrandt's ''Self portrait as a young man'' works in a different way for me.
While it is more in the way of a posed portrait, it doesn't grandify him and you feel you would recognise him if you met him on the street.
While the palette is dark, the light falling across the artist's face creates a glow. There seems to be no strife here just a young man content with life.
The halo of light highlights the face, framed by the texture of the hair and cloak, with little detail in the lower part of the painting
David Hockney's ''Self Portrait 1954” is a collage on newsprint.
This to me seems to be about attitude.
I like the directness of the collage and the use of newsprint as a backdrop for the vivid figure in primary colours.
The face does catches attention with its large glasses and top heavy mop of dark hair, but the clothes are also a statement - a medley of colour, shape and texture.
Frida Kahlo's ''Self Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird'' 1940 .
This bright vivid iconic portrait is steeped in heritage and redolent with symbolism.
The face is the focal point, ironically placed in the centre and surrounded by over scale vivid foliage. The dragon flies and butterflies are symbols of hope and rebirth.
The dead mockingbird hanging from the thorn necklace signifies a lack of , luck in love, while the necklace itself is an echo of Christ's crown of thorns
and suffering. The cat is a symbol of bad luck while the monkey represents things missing from her life.
The National Portrait Valletta egregious / Refractions Self portraiture in the 20th Century .
1 found One of my favourite self portraits is a portrait done in ink and watercolors by Louise Nevelson c 1938 I would love to be able to produce something as powerful as this : strength, restless energy and femininity conveyed in a few lines.
She is quoted as saying ''when I used a line, it was like a violin's.
Recommended Reading
David Hockney
I've really enjoyed looking at David Hockney's work and can clearly see the difference in approach between his earlier and later work. His style in ''Christopher lsherwood and Don Bachardy'' 1968 is very controlled, rendering an almost photographic still; a flat image of two seated men .
In ''Garrowby Hill” painted in 1998 the treatment is looser and more abstract, with a the vivid road plunging away into a kaleidoscope of bright colour and angular shapes.
Now his approach seems to have changed again though the blues and purples are still there.
I had a look online at the gallery of ''The Bigger Picture'' exhibition and ''Winter Timber'' 2009 and 'The Arrival of Spring inWoldgate " 2011 are much more stylised works. l love his treatment of these, contrasting the starkness of the trees with the rich textural tapestry that is surrounds them.
I found a blog about the new book ''A Bigger Message" which has photos of him working on these, painting a number of panels simultaneously in the open air.
I was also intrigued by his collages. I picked his ''Self Portrait 1954'' as one of my portraits for research. I liked its cheeky attitude: primary colours in your face, the collage format and his use of text as a background.
I really enjoy his later photocollages such as ''Robert Littman Floating in My Pool, 0ct. 1982 and ''Pearl blossom Highway, 11-18 April 1986''
Leonardo da Vinci'. Painter at the Court of Milan''
Extract from the National Gallery website 'Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan' is the most complete display of Leonardo's rare surviving paintings ever held. This unprecedented exhibition -the first of its kind anywhere in the world - brings together sensational international loans never before seen in the UK.
Whlle numerous exhibitions have looked at Leonardo da Vinci as an inventor, scientist or draughtsman, this is the first to be dedicated to his aims and techniques as a painter. Inspired by the recently restored National Gallery painting, The Virgin of the Rocks, this exhibition focuses on Leonardo as an artist. In particular it concentrates on the work he produced as court painter to Duke Lodovico Sforza in Milan in the late 1480s and 1490s.
As a painter, Leonardo aimed to convince viewers of the reality of what they were seeing while still aspiring to create ideals of beauty - particularly in his exquisite portraits - and, in his religious works, to convey a sense of awe-inspiring mystery.
Works on display Featuring the finest paintings and drawings by Leonardo and his followers, the exhibition examines Leonardo's pursuit for perfection in his representation of the human form. Works on display include 'La Belle Ferronière' (muse du Louvre, Paris). the 'Madonna Litta' (Hermitage, Saint Petersburg) and 'Saint Jerome' (Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome).
From the reviews it seems the exhibition was hugely successful.
According to Jonathan Jones in The Guardian '' The National Galley's exhibition was unique because curator Luke Syson gave us his personal, passionate vision of Leonardo, not a total view of Leonardo as a multi- disciplinary artist; it was a fierce championing of him as a painter''.
Watching some of the gallery videos, Syson's passion certainly comes across: he talks of ''pictures that speak soul to soul...to people across time'' describing it as a process of ''endless revelation.
There were many highlights
- the juxtaposition of two versions of ''Virgin on the Rocks" together in one place probably for the first time ever
- having the recently attributed ''Christ as Salvatore Mundi'' included in the exhibition
- and the discovery of a hidden painting behind ''The Virgin of the Rock's"
Through the exhibition, we now know much more about how Leonardo painted, how that process evolved and how he worked with his workshop and students.
The exhibition included a number of drawings. Two good examples of pentimento (rethinking) are No 21: A Kneeling Angel, about 1480-4,and No 85 : Sketches for the Virgin and Child with St Anne and the infant St John the Baptist; machinery designs 1499 - 1500 which according to the exhibition guide'' is perhaps the most extreme example of Leonardo's pentimento (rethinking) technique. The figures are so heavily reworked that it is impossible to follow their exact evolution.
I can clearly see how Leonardo redrew these images over and over and I have been doing a lot more redrawing in my attempts.
I've ordered the Exhibition catalogue as it seems to be very comprehensive and have wonderful illustrations.
I was also interested to see that ''Leonardo da Vinci was primarily a scientist later in life, with art and painting very much a sideline - according to the biggest exhibition yet of his groundbreaking anatomical studies'' - running currently on exhibition in Buckingham Palace.
The curator Martin Clayton has said.."What this exhibition shows is that Leonardo was primarily a scientist, at least for the latter part of his life, who executed a few paintings on the side''
OTHER ACTIVITY
Picasso Gallery : Malaga
We visited the Picasso Gallery in Malaga while on holidays last year.
It was wonderful to see his work in the flesh. His paintings pulsed with energy and I was particularly struck by the power of his portraits of women.
I was surprised at how playful and prolific he was: his work encompassed child- like owl masks, impressive ceramics numerous sketches and of course his paintings.
There was also an exhibition of photos of him working taken a number of years before.
National Gallerv : Dublin
I visited the National Gallery before Christmas. I had been there a number of times before but this time I spent more time looking at fewer paintings.
I was more aware of being drawn to particular works, such as William John Leech's ''Convent Garden Brittany'' . I loved the contrast of the luminous sunlight and the dappled shaded areas and also how the single striking figure in the right foreground is in counterpoint to figures in the upper left third . I was also amazed how what looks like blobs of paint up close transforms into a flower or a woman's gown when viewed from a distance.
I was very struck by Louis Le Brocquy's ''A Family'' 1951, which with its dark palette and stark lines was vastly different to the usual family portrait. This was conceived in the aftermath of WWll with the threat of nuclear disaster looming, I like the use of shape in the composition and how the bodies seem to flow into and out of their surroundings.
RTE recently aired a wonderful documentary made in 2007 to celebrate his life. Le Brocquy died on 25 th April this year. Called ''Le Brocquy-The Inner Human Reality'', the programme was fascinating as he explained how through all his work he has been striving to make contact with the inner human reality present in all of us. He went through his work from when he first started out to his latest exhibition ''Portrait Heads'' held in 2006.
Books
I'm getting lots of support from my family.
My husband gave me " Art The Whole Story" for Christmas as I had been lamenting my lack of grounding in art appreciation. This beautiful book works through a timeline starting with prehistory and ending in present day. It explains major movements and covers works of significance from all traditions, giving the background to the work, a profile of the artist and highlighting the major focal points, enabling the viewer to absorb and appreciate the work in depth.
I'm working through it very slowly and not always sequentially.
I've also been gifted with Lara Marlowe's ''Painted with Words'' another beautiful but very different book. This is a collection of essays which covers not just artists, but also collectors and writers. The essays give a flavour of the artists as people : their lives and influences and explains their works in that context. The book is beautifully illustrated.
TUTOR SUGGESTIONS
OSKAR KOKOSCHKA
I like Kokoschka’s drawing style as seen here in “Alma Mahler” and “Nude with back turned”
In “Alma Mahler”, I like how the scribbled marks which define the facial plane contrast with the strong definite lines of profile. While the hair is only hinted at with a few random marks, layers of marks are used to capture the intensity of the eyes as she gazes into the distance.
In the second drawing I particularly like the sparse lines and the angles of the body contrasting with the almost vertical fall of hair.
His landscapes in contrast have a lot going on and appeal to me less.
Oscar Kokoschka
"Oskar Kokoschka is the third in the great trio of Viennese artists [See also: Gustav Klimt; Egon Schiele], and the one whose reputation is currently hardest to assess. He was born at Pöchlarn on the Danube in 1886. His father was Czech and came from a well known family of Prague goldsmiths. He was perhaps rather work-shy: Kokoschka later said of him, 'From him I learned to endure poverty rather than work slavishly at distasteful work.' His mother came from the mountain region of Styria, and claimed to have second sight. Oskar was the second of their four sons; when he was still a child the family moved to Vienna where his elder brother died in 1891.
"As a boy, Kokoschka was not particularly attracted to art. He wanted to study chemistry but was recommended for a scholarship at the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts by a teacher who had been impressed by his drawings. He entered the School in 1905, the year in which he started to paint in oils, and in 1907 he found work at the Wiener Werkstötte. Soon he began to expand his activities to literature. Asked to produce a children's book, he wrote his own text, Die Traumenden Knaben (The Dreaming Youths), which was scarcely suitable for the young, but made a good basis for his distinctive illustrations. He also wrote two plays, Sphinx und Strohamann (The Sphinx and the Scarecrow), and Mürder, Hoffnung der Frauen (Murderer, Hope of Women): these are now considered to mark the beginnings of Expressionist theatre in Germany.
"In 1908 Kokoschka's work was shown in the Kunstschau exhibition in Vienna, which featured the avant-garde group around Klimt. His contributions were a centre of controversy because of their Expressionist violence, and he was dismissed from the School of Arts and Crafts as a result. In 1909 his work was shown at the second Kunstschau, and his two plays were performed in the little open-air theatre attached to the exhibition buildings. There was a tremendous scandal because of their violence, and their unconventional and apparently irrational structure, and even the Werkstötte would no longer employ him. At one time he managed to keep alive by betting on his own capacity to drink visitors to Vienna under the table. His chief protector was the pioneer Modernist architect Adolf Loos, who secured portrait commissions for him. One portrait was of the satirical writer Karl Kraus, editor of Die Facket (The Torch). Kraus said of this: 'It is quite possible that those who know me will not recognize me. But it is certain that those who do not know me will recognize me.'
"In 1910 Kokoschka's luck changed. He went to Berlin and was taken up by Herwarth Walden, the energetic owner-editor of Der Sturm, who commissioned him to do title-page drawings for the magazine and used one for almost every issue. He was also given a contract by the powerful dealer Paul Cassirer. In 1911 he returned to Vienna and was appointed as assistant teacher at the very school which had dismissed him. He had a show at the Hagenbund in Vienna, of which the opening reception was attended by Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the throne, who exclaimed indignantly: 'This fellow's bones ought to be broken in his body!' Most important of all, in 1911 he began a passionate affair with Alma Mahler, the widow of the great composer, an elegant society beauty considerably older than himself. The year 1912 was better still - he was able to give up teaching and showed at the Sonderbund exhibition in Cologne, which united the whole German-speaking avant garde, and with the Blaue Reiter in Munich.
"By 1913 his relationship with Alma Mahler was beginning to show signs of strain. They travelled to Italy together, and on one occasion visited the Naples aquarium. Kokoschka watched an insect sting and paralyse a fish, before devouring it, and at once associated the scene with the woman by his side.
"He was still a controversial figure: when he began teaching art at a smart Viennese girls' school whose headmistress was known for her progressive views, some of the parents objected so strongly that the Austrian government actually banned him from teaching. War, when it broke out, seemed a release from an impossible relationship and an impossible situation. Adolf Loos used his influence to have him appointed Lieutenant in an exclusive regiment of dragoons with a particularly glamorous uniform. As soon as the appointment was gazetted Loos had a postcard made of Kokoschka in his finery which was sold in shops alongside those showing leading actresses.
"At the beginning of 1915 Kokoschka was seriously wounded - and briefly taken prisoner - in Galicia: he suffered a head injury and a bayonet wound to the lung. He spent a period of convalescence in Vienna, but was then sent to the Isonzo Front, where his health soon broke down completely. He went to Stockholm to consult a brain specialist and then to Dresden to try and recover his health. His anguish was as much mental as physical, and was perhaps connected with his residual feelings for Alma Mahler. To exorcize his obsession he commissioned a life-sized doll, complete and life-like in all details, which he treated like a living companion - it has even been said that he escorted it to the opera.
"After the end of the war the political situation in Dresden was very unstable, just as it was everywhere else in Germany, and Kokoschka formed part of a small, left-wing bohemian group. In the newly liberal climate of 1919 he was officially appointed Professor at the Dresden Academy, and this post brought with it a beautiful house and studio. Outside Dresden, his reputation continued to rise. The composer Paul Hindemith set Murderer, Hope of Women to music, and it received numerous performances, among them one at the Dresden State Opera. In 1922 Kokoschka was invited to exhibit at the Venice Biennale. His health had now improved and he was becoming restless. He resigned his post at the Dresden Academy in 1924, simply giving a note to the porter and leaving the city before his intentions had been discovered. A period of travel followed, financed by the proceeds of his now lucrative Cassirer contract. Using Munich as his main base he went all over Europe, and also to North Africa, Egypt, Turkey and Palestine. The year 1931 brought great success for him, despite the darkening political horizon: he had a show at the Kunsthalle in Mannheim which Cassirer's successors brought to the Galerie Georges Petit in Paris, where it did well with the Parisian public. However, from this triumph there also came a conflict. Kokoschka demanded more independence from his dealers; they, in turn, were anxious to establish his work as a staple commodity in the art market. Kokoschka broke with them, and there was an acrimonious exchange of letters in the Frankfurter Zeitung.
"In 1932 Kokoschka once again showed at the Venice Biennale, but now his reception was stormy. Mussolini made it plain that he disliked Kokoschka's art, and the pro-Nazi press in Germany seized the opportunity to attack him. By 1933 his finances were severely strained, and he left Paris for the provinces and then went to Vienna to be with his mother. He felt ill at ease in a city ruled by the fascist administration of Chancellor Dollfuss, and after his mother's death later that year he went to Prague and took Czech citizenship. The Austrian government tried to lure him back by offering him the Directorship of the School of Arts and Crafts, and in 1937 he was the subject of a major retrospective at the Osterreiches Museum für Kunst und Industrie This perhaps meant less to him than the fact that his work was also on show that year in the Degenerate Art Exhibition in Munich - at the same time more than four hundred of his works were removed from German museums. In Prague he had met Olda Pavlovska, who was later to become his wife, and he was busy expressing support for the Republic cause in Spain.
"The Munich Agreement Of 1938 indicated that Prague was no longer a safe refuge. In September Kokoschka left for England. This was the logical choice, but it was also the only place in Europe where his art was very little known. The Kokoschkas were desperately poor. In 1939 they moved to Polperro in Cornwall where Oskar made watercolours of the local scenery and Olda ran a pastry shop to help their finances. The next year, however, they returned to London, as Kokoschka was convinced that their neighbours were suspicious of them. London bored and depressed him:
What am I to do in this hole [their London flat] ? I must invent new subjects for my paintings. I am quite starved for something to see. When the spring comes I feel how it stirs in me as in a migrant bird, and I become quite nervous: I must leave town and paint something real - a grasshopper or something. When I come back to town the landscapes turn into political pictures. My heart aches, but I cannot help it. I cannot just paint landscapes without taking any notice of what happens.
"His fortunes began to look up as soon as the war was over. In 1945 he received a symbolic tribute in war-battered Vienna: an exhibition shared with Klimt and Schiele, both long dead. In 1947 there was a large Kokoschka retrospective at the Kunsthalle in Berne, and in 1952 a room was devoted to his work at the 26th Venice Biennale, Kokoschka had become a British citizen in 1947, but was not eager to remain in a country which he felt had slighted him. In 1953 he began to run his School of Seeing at the Internationale Sommerakademie für Bildende Kunst in Salzburg, thus re-establishing his ties with the Austrian milieu in which he began his career, and in the same year he settled permanently at Villeneuve on Lake Geneva. He was now once again an extremely celebrated artist, but he had drifted away from the post-war art world, and, though much respected, was a marginal figure by the time of his death in 1980."
LEONARD MCCOMB
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| Simon Karen Day and Family |
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| Frankie Dettori winning the St Leger |
Leonard McComb – Extract from Royal Academy of Arts Website
Leonard McComb has described his work as visual abstractions after nature. He is very interested in the detail in nature and declares that everything he draws or paints whether a portrait head, flower, landscape, still life or breaking sea wave is for him a portrait.
He is a versatile artist who celebrates working in various media and is unusual amongst his contemporaries in being represented in the Tate Gallery Collection with works in oil, watercolour, print as well as sculpture. His sculpture 'Young Man Standing', also known as 'the Golden Man' (Tate Gallery), was the subject of National controversy when it was withdrawn from exhibition in Lincoln Cathedral as it was considered indecent by a senior cathedral cleric.
Leonard McComb studied at Manchester School of Art and subsequently at the Slade School of Fine Art from 1956 to 1959, followed by a Postgraduate in sculpture, also at the Slade, in 1960. He went on to teach at various art schools, including Oxford Brookes University, Sir John Cass College, Slade School of Fine Art, Royal College of Art and Goldsmiths College, and in 1974 he founded the Sunningwell School of Art, Oxford.
Having destroyed most of his early work, McComb was included in the exhibition 'The Human Clay' held at the Hayward Gallery in 1976, his first solo show being held the following year at the Coracle Press. In 1983 an Arts Council touring exhibition entitled 'Leonard McComb Drawing Painting Sculpture' was organised by the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford and shown at the Serpentine Gallery, London; City Art Gallery, Manchester; Gardner Arts Centre, University of Sussex and the Fruit Market Gallery, Edinburgh. His work continued to be exhibited in many important group shows including the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1982, the Tate Gallery in 1984, the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington D.C. in 1986 and the Museum of Modern Art, Brussels in 1987.
Among McComb’s many awards are the Royal Academy’s Jubilee Award (1977); Korn Ferry Award (1990); Times Watercolour Prize (1992 and 1993); Nordstern Print Prize (1997); and the RWS Prize (1998). McComb has received many major commissions for private and corporate collections throughout the UK, Europe and the USA. In 1999 he completed a commissioned portrait of the novelist Doris Lessing for the National Portrait Gallery, London. The following year he was selected by the Vatican to design a Jubilee Medal, featuring Pope John Paul II and the late Archbishop Basil Hume, for the worldwide series to commemorate the Millennium.
McComb was elected Royal Academician in 1991 (ARA 1987) and in 1995 was elected Keeper of the Royal Academy, placing him in charge of the Royal Academy Schools until 1998. He was made an Honorary Member of the Royal Watercolour Society and the Royal Society of Printmakers in 1996. McComb lives and works in London.
Recent solo exhibitions
2004 Drawings, Paintings and Sculpture, Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh
Wolsey Art Gallery, Ipswich
2001 Between Earth and Heaven, Museum of Modern Art, Ostende
2000 Leonard McComb Portraits, New York Studio School Gallery
1997 The Pursuit of Painting, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin
1993 Leonard McComb Drawings and Painting,
Browse and Darby, London
The Sussex Scene, Hove Museum and Art Gallery,
Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne
1992 The Discerning Eye, Mall Galleries, London
New Works on Paper, Gillian Jason Gallery at the
Business Design Centre, Islington
1991 Cabinet Paintings, Gillian Jason Gallery, London
1990 Images of Paradise, Christies, London
Public collections
Arts Council
Cecil Higgins Art Gallery and Museum, Bedford
Birmingham City Art Gallery
British Council
British Museum
Cambridge University
Manchester Art Gallery
National Portrait Gallery
Swindon Art Gallery
Tate Gallery
Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne
Ulster Museum
Victoria and Albert Museum
Art Galleries of Worcester and Belfast
Leicester City Gallery
Commissions and awards
2006 Commissioned to design mosaics for Westminster Cathedral, London
2004 Awarded Honorary Doctorate by Oxford Brookes University
John Ward
John Ward, who has died aged 89, was an establishment painter par excellence. A prolific artist, he painted many portraits of the good and the great - cabinet ministers, college principals, businessmen and city dignitaries. He particularly prized his connections with royalty, and Diana, Princess of Wales, in her wedding dress, Princess Anne, the Princess Royal (for a portrait now in the National Portrait Gallery), and the Duchess of Gloucester each sat for him. He also painted the christenings of Princes William and Harry, made drawings of Balmoral for the Queen and gave sketching lessons to Prince Charles. When his work earned him the CBE in 1984, he admitted, "I love medals and orders and dingle-dangles and I shall certainly wear mine all the time."
Ward's own background was quite modest. The youngest of seven children, he was born in Hereford and brought up in a street leading to the cathedral. His father kept an antiques shop, where he restored pictures, and the smell of linseed oil and turpentine pervaded the shop and flat above. After attending the local elementary school, St Owen's, at the age of 15 he went to the city's school of arts and crafts. A modest institution with only a dozen students and two members of staff, it none the less gave Ward a training good enough to win him a place at the Royal College of Art, London, for which he remained grateful. His teachers at the RCA included Barnett Freedman, Percy Horton, Charles Mahoney and Alan Sorrell, all of whom were lasting influences. In 1939, he received a £5 drawing prize from the college, which he used to pay off his debts to them.
When the second world war started, Ward enlisted in the Royal Engineers on the strength of having done architectural drawing at the RCA; this qualified him to design and construct pillboxes along the Kent coast. He found his war years liberating - his fellow soldiers were always eager to be drawn, and he said he particularly enjoyed doing so when they were asleep for, between snores, even the toughest face relaxed and revealed the face of a child. At the end of the war, Ward met his wife Alison Williams at a YMCA in Ghent, when he was stationed in Belgium. They married in 1950.
On being demobbed in 1946, return to the RCA seemed pointless, but a travelling scholarship gave Ward time to draw, and he went to stay in the Cotswolds and Oxford. He found work as an illustrator, on county guides to Herefordshire and North Yorkshire, as well as on Laurie Lee's Cider with Rosie when it was published in 1959. This illustration work led to a four-year contract with Vogue, from 1948 to 1952. Ward loved his time there, revelling in the jaunts with editors and fashion editors, the excitement of the deadline and the unexpected subjects, debutantes, corsets, jewellery, actors and actresses, the visits to Paris, what he called "the style and the nonsense of it all".
The influence of the Vogue years was of lasting importance. Socially, the tip he received from the fashion photographer Norman Parkinson about how to handle models - "Make a fuss of them. You've got to know who they are, what they smoke and whom they're in love with" - was to be useful advice with sitters from all walks of life for the rest of Ward's career. And artistically the graphic style he learnt by necessity - the quick, spontaneous drawing in pencil or pen and ink and watercolour - brought out his natural talent and produced some of his best and most distinctive work.
Tiring of London, Ward and his wife moved to Kent in 1954 and bought Bilting Court near Ashford, a substantial lath and plaster Tudor house, which he filled with all manner of antiques, objets d'art and junk. By now sufficient commissions were coming in to pay for his growing family, including advertisements for BP and Shell, a calendar for Whitbread's brewery, and a mural for the remote village church of Challock in Kent. Portraiture was even more lucrative. Subjects included Joyce Grenfell (Ward also illustrated two of her books), Sir Michael Adeane, the Queen's private secretary, Sir Roger Bannister, Lord Denning, Norman Parkinson and Sir Arthur Norrington, then president of Trinity College, Oxford.
He also produced group portraits for the Society of Dilettanti, Annabel's club, and a collection of cabinet secretaries. Aside from portraits, Ward drew landscapes and cityscapes, frequently in watercolour, of Italy. He once described the things he loved painting as "a pretty girl, a cafe, still life".
Principled, clubbable, rather courtly and a prolific letter writer, Ward was something of an Edwardian figure. He was a member of the Royal Academy, the Royal Watercolour Society, the Royal Society of Portrait Painters and the New English Art Club. He was appointed CBE in 1985. Throughout his career, he stuck to the central artistic belief he had learnt at art school in Hereford: the necessity of good draughtsmanship.
Such standards, however, made him less tolerant of artists who did not share his way of thinking. Damien Hirst's work he described as "ghastly muck". In 1997 he was one of four artists who resigned from the Royal Academy on account of the Sensation exhibition of young British artists, including Hirst and Tracey Emin: "They've been invited into Burlington House and what have they done? I'll tell you. They've taken advantage of us and written 'bum' on our walls, and they call it art."
Norman Rosenthal, the academy's exhibitions secretary, declared in a television interview that he doubted whether posterity would regard Ward's art kindly, saying: "What's the point of painting a picture unless it's going to change the world?" Ward, who had no desire to change the world, was even more insulted, adding, "I want his balls." Rosenthal later apologised unreservedly, but Ward did not return.
He is survived by Alison and their four sons and twin daughters.
John Doyle writes ... Almost 50 years ago, I was introduced to John on the steps of Burlington House on the morning of the opening of the summer exhibition. He had recently been elected an associate of the Royal Academy; he was the rising star of the academy, and I greatly admired his painting.
Luckily, we were neighbours in Kent, and sensing my determination to paint, he invited me to his studio in Bilting. I entered that Aladdin's cave that in later years I was to know so well.
At first my efforts were pretty dismal, but John would always help young artists with advice and encouragement. He was far more impressed with determination and hard work than just talent: "It always boils down to character in the end." He invited me to join him on a painting trip to Venice.
At 5am on the first morning, there was a bang on the door, "Come on, we're just leaving." Never have I dressed so quickly. I knew John wouldn't wait. He put me right under Santa Maria della Salute and said "Paint that!" I looked up at that vast dome above me catching the early morning light and said: "How the hell do I do it?" "Oh," said John, "Start at the top and work downwards" - and he was gone. We settled into a daily routine, moving from place to place with the changing light.
At the end of the two weeks I had completed six pictures, and three were hung in the summer exhibition. John made me a painter, and I am grateful.
A month ago we returned to Venice together. His joy at seeing it again, his pleasure in the simple things around him: the birds pecking the crumbs off our dinner table, an old woman pushing a pram across the Campo Santa Margarita, a pretty girl, all caught John's eye with a love and wonder undiminished after half a century.
As we left for the airport, the distant Dolomites topped with snow fretted the northern horizon. John fell silent and did not speak. He was saying goodbye to Venice.
· John Stanton Ward, artist, born October 10 1917; died June 13 200
PART 5 : DRAW AND EXPERIMENT
Research Point : The Golden Section
OCA manual p 153…”it is inside this section that the most important features of a drawing or painting should be placed.”
It is based on a mathematical formula devised by Euclid and developed by Plato which states that a line or area can be divided so that the “smaller part is to the larger part as the larger part is to the whole”. The ratio of both whole to larger and larger to smaller is 1.618 approx.
In simple terms , this means a division of approximate proportions 3:5 and can be applied to the format of a work ..the proportion of land to sky or the placing of a focal point (Watercolour Workbook- Anne Elseworth,).
A simpler and less rigid grid is made by splitting the picture area into thirds, regardless of the format chosen. The area is divided into three, horizontally and vertically, giving a grid with 9 sections with lines crossing at 4 points. The theory is that positioning focal points near these lines or intersections will result in a pleasing image (Watercolour painting – Wendy Jelbert and Ian Sideaway).
A number of websites I looked at showed how you can continue to create golden sections within golden sections.
This example is from a Tutorial: Creating art using the golden ratio on http://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk
A number of artists such as Da Vinci , Constable and Seurat are said to have used this type of approach.
John Constable’s “The Cornfield”
This painting has major points of interest such as the child and the dog placed along the lines demarking the golden section while the church has even greater prominence, being placed on the intersection of two of the lines.
In Seurats “ Bathing at Asnieres” the horizon falls exactly at the golden section of the height of the painting. The trees and people are placed at golden sections of smaller sections of the painting. (source website goldennumber.net)
Jacques Louis David’s “The Death of Socrates” is a good example of the rule of thirds
. Socrates is placed on one of the verticals with his upper body upright and finger pointing upwards. His importance is made evident by his being slightly elevated with his facial features at the intersection with the horizontal. His light skin and clothing stand out in the dark surrounds.
The bed is placed one third from the bottom ,the dark section to the left takes up one third of the painting and the leaning figure’s hands frame the intersection at the top third of the picture.
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Paul Gauguin’s “Arearea” the horizontal divisions into thirds are marked by the top of the dog and the dark section extending to the left of the two girls respectively.
The girl in white who is the focal point is positioned along the right vertical. Her face sits into the intersection with the upper horizontal while her hand Rests against the lower right intersection.
John Lidzey’s “Oil Lamp has the lamp of the title running along the far vertical while the shadowed area at top right runs a third of the way out.
The small cask and narrow base of the lamp are in the lower third.
Stephen Scott Young’s “Castaway” seems to break the rules being divided almost in half by a strong vertical.
However the man and the first upright are both a third of the way in to the painting while the right hand half of the painting is further composed according to the rule of thirds – see below.
Good and Poor Composition
While balance is important in a painting, complete symmetry can be too static and lack interest and many of the most pleasing works are asymmetrical with compositional elements which lead the eye around the work.
Movement creates interest and comes from differences in size, shape, or value *.This refers to tonal value but edge value can have a part to play also.
* from Dramatize Your Paintings with Tonal Values by Carole Katchen
In Scott Young’s painting I like the use of negative shapes: predominantly geometric shapes frame the naturalistic figure of the man. His coloured shirt also stands out against the muted tones of the background. I also like the interplay of light against dark and textured against flat shapes.
BACKGROUND READING.
The Idyllic World of John William North ARA RWS
The Winter Sun by John William North ARA RWS (1891)
By R M Billingham
Halsway Manor by John William North ARA RWS
The Somerset countryside has always been a landscape artist’s paradise but it was unknown to many of the greatest painters of the nineteenth century, and was never immortalised by a major artist such as Constable whose inspiration was the Suffolk countryside. But in 1860 one young illustrator penetrated the rural depths of West Somerset; he was John William North who was then eighteen years old, and it was the beginning of a life-long association with the area. He stayed at Halsway Manor near Crowcombe and returned there several times, and he has left us a portrait of the house before it was restored, in an illustration he designed for a gift book called “A Round of Days”. He also stayed at the nearby hamlet of Woolston Moor, and then years later, in 1884 settled in Somerset and stayed until his death in 1924, though he had several different homes, notably Beggearnhuish House near Washford.
In his lifetime North was respected as both painter and illustrator and in both media his best work expresses the pastoral delights of the countryside. A number of his illustrations were engraved in wood by both Swain and the Dalziel brothers, the best craftsmen of the day, and appeared in illustrated gift books. He was also respected as a colourist by contemporary art critics, and was considered a master of watercolour techniqu
e. Several eminent artists, around them Sir Hubert Herkomer, RA, visited him in Somerset to seek his advice.
Although much of North’s work, like the oil painting Summer in a Western Wood of 1907/8, is redolent of the
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| ASummer in a Western Wood by J W North ARA RW |
West Country, not many of his pieces are specifically topographical. One interesting exception to this is the large watercolour view of Taunton he painted in 1880. The
conventional foreground may be painted from memory, but the view across the River Tone is clearly taken from the site of the present county cricket ground and shows the churches of St Mary and St James.
North did not often depict easily recognisable landmarks, and the titles of his exhibited paintings do not usually refer to specific places: Little Rivers Rising in the West, and Spring in a Western Orchard are typical examples. He frequently painted his immediate environment, such as Stanborough Farm of 1922, a charming if rather escapist interpretation of the remote smallholding that was his home. At Woolston Moor he painted the Old Yew Tree; his daughter remembers that he was fascinated by the way one tree was growing out of another. That North loved studying trees is shown in his illustrations to an article called Summer in Somerset by Richard Jeffries which were published in “The English Magazine” in October 1887. The sketches of Exford and Minehead are dull, but that of Holford Glen, a sylvan scene, is much more alive. Some of his poetic illustrations were designed twenty years earlier; about the time he drew Halsway. A design prepared for the Religious Tract Society illustrating “Lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone”, is a typical expression of his country world, in which we get no sense of agricultural poverty, or of the sweat of the brow. He had plenty of sympathy with the farmer’s life, and was politically active on their behalf, but he also admired William Blake, and if he lacked that poets’ inspiration he nevertheless saw the countryside with an idealized vision.
North was one of the last Romantics in the true nineteenth century sense of the term. Much of his work concerns communion with nature, and this attitude of mind is aptly summed up in an illustration of his published in 1867 in the magazine “Once an Week”. A solitary figure, very similar to the one who appears in the picture of Halsway, looks away from the spectator, and contemplates the countryside around her. In his later life, North, too, looked away from the events of his own time. There is no trace of a knowledge of twentieth century art movements in his work; still less is there any hint of the tragedy of the Great War, or even of the personal loss he suffered when his daughter died of diptheria in 1897. He was a fair-weather countryman who viewed his scenes in Summer and sunlight. His emotional range was limited but his lyricism was suited to the gentle landscape of West Somerset, which he knew well, and portrayed faithfully.
I wasn’t very comfortable with the exercise and felt a bit awkward just playing around with the different media.
I chose soft pencil for the tonal exercises but struggled here, not due to the medium I chose but because I couldn’t seem to get enough contrast in my range of tonal values. I did a number of unsuccessful drawings of some driftwood, but finally gave up and tried drawing some shells in pencil then soft pastels which seemed to work better.
Doing the line drawing was harder than I thought, as in my first few drawings the proportions were way off. This only improved when I spent more time looking at the object and assessing where the different parts were relative to each other, before I started to draw.
Doing the line drawing was harder than I thought, as in my first few drawings the proportions were way off. This only improved when I spent more time looking at the object and assessing where the different parts were relative to each other, before I started to draw.
I really enjoyed the exercise on negative space.
Best results were with soft pencil and latterly graphite stick – these were fluid which helped when I had to draw quickly.
