Assignment 1-5.
At the very beginning, I was really excited to start something new. I had the passion but had only basic drawing skills, not much experience and never practised regularly. My visual skills, knowledge of the medium, techniques needed great improvement. At that time I had a very “shy” approach, using only graphite pencils – occasionally charcoal – and my drawing style was very tight – due to the fear of failure. I did not enjoy the first couple of exercises wholeheartedly because my sketches were way too far from my expectations. The first valuable lesson was from this course that I had to be in less control and I also had to introduce the regular practice into my everyday life if I wanted any improvement. Slowly but surely it happened so even though my first assignment was done with a pencil and still looked tight I felt I had the ability to improve. In the formative feedback for Assignment 1. I was advised to do more preparatory work and overall practice – like thumbnail sketches. From Part 2. I started drawing more and did more quick sketches for the next Assignment.
In part two, there was an introduction to colours. The second feedback from my tutor suggested understanding colours more and offered some really useful reading materials. Apart from the liquid medium, I tried a very wide range of colouring tools. I found pastel is very expressive and I really enjoyed Inktense pencils because of their powerful and bold colours. I was determined to learn more about how colours related to each other, how you can reach certain effects with different tonal values, blending and generally about harmony and intensity. Later on, I used many times the ‘Interaction of Color’ from Josef Albers suggested by my tutor. Still, my favourite exercise remained the still life using line, because of the fresh and clean image done with black ink.
Part Three Expanse was the most troublesome, though I enjoyed learning about different perspectives. I think the reason for not being drawn particularly to landscape is that I tend to draw every small detail (leaves, pebbles) instead of suggesting their presence so it was overwhelming sometimes and seemed an impossible task to finish. However, those exercises did loosen me up noticeably. Part 4 made an improvement in my observational skills especially the drawing exercises in three dimension. I really enjoyed every part of it but clearly, I had to (and still have to) work on proportions and tones a lot. My personal project in part 5. was a really good experience and reflected my journey through this course. In this last feedback, my tutor suggested attending life drawing classes. I feel that would do good, too and planning to look for classes once the lockdown situation is over.
In the beginning, I was not really keen on the research part but the more I did the more I enjoyed to the point when I spent long hours online just wandering from painter to painter through centuries and art movements. Overall I learned a lot through this course, I am happy with the improvement I made and looking forward to the next chapter.
LaraDraw 