FIN 110 Unit 3 – December 3, 2020 – Spätblühendes Künstlertagebuch

Critique Drawing Two

Critique Drawing Two involves three parts:

Artists Research (pdf embedded below)
Concept Development (in sketchbook and photographed/shared below)
Material Practice (on 24 x 18 inch OR 22 x 30 inch drawing paper and photographed below)

Critique Drawing #2 first day: tape the 22 x 30 inch paper to the easel in the middle of the studio to remind myself to do the work…

I bought some Stonehenge warm white because I thought I would be likely to try more work using charcoal, and I don’t like the random marks that paper texture adds to the surface of rubbed charcoal.

Next I’ll review the artist research and start to develop some ideas for the drawing in my sketchbook. I’ve taken a second piece of the Stonehenge paper and cut it into four pieces that I can use to “experiment” with the charcoal and marks, to see how they work on the paper before putting them onto the actual critique drawing.

four pieces of warm white Stonehenge for experimenting with

testing types of charcoal and “ink” on Stonehenge paper (pre thumbnail)

Critique #2 – thumbnail explorations of ideas

I’m inspired by nature and by people. The thumbnails below are each based on photographs I took while hiking/walking.

I’m tending towards #4 because of the variety of line and possibilities for shading. I’ll be working on a 22 x 30 sheet of warm white Stonehenge, so the challenge is to do something big, bigger than I’ve done before as a drawing. I definitely want to avoid the geese in #6 as, well, cartoons. enough. I need to practice just doing silhouettes of geese and ducks on a sheet of paper before I try them again in a sketch. I’ll think about which of the above six I’ll do by the end of Sunday.

After working on the thumbnails for a few hours, I grabbed a piece of 7.5 x 11 inch Stonehenge warm white to start to “experiment”. I covered the sheet with willow charcoal powder, and immediately fell in love with the medium and the paper, and how the paper does not interfere with the smoothness of the surface that is created by the charcoal powder on paper. My intention had been to cover this small piece with the charcoal powder and then go to bed, so I walked away from the piece after smoothing the charcoal over the paper, and went to brush my teeth.

When I returned to the studio to put things away, I noticed this figure within the page, and so I had to stay up to find out who she was.

She is “Michal”, one of six woman mentioned in the Bible who were described as “barren”. The other five were eventually able to be “healed” of their barrenness, but Michal apparently never was “healed”, and remained childless through the centuries to the present day. I’m not exactly sure how I know that this is Michal.

Because I completed the sketch, I have included her in my “weekly sketch” file, but also here as a thumbnail breakout. I’m looking forward to working more on larger pieces of paper. And I continue to love charcoal and additive/reductive methods, experimenting with line (broken, implied). I think there are other figures waiting to be born.

If I were to continue to work on Michal, I would address her right hand/arm, which do not work to my complete satisfaction. I would also work on the dabbled part at the bottom of her long hair at the right hand side of her body. I had to add this dappling here as my kitten walked over the page and left a little charcoal paw print which looked like a cat face, strangely enough, emerging next to Michal on her right side. I added a few more dapples, which changed the configuration of the marks, and cat face disappeared.

Critique drawing process

I’ve decided to use these two gesture drawings as a basis upon which to build my critique drawing number 2. I’m curious to challenge myself with drawing multiple figures within a composition, and use tonal values to create depth/distance.