Category Archives: Assignment 1

Tutor report: Assignment 1

Overall Comments

Hello Patricia, thank you for submitting your work for Assignment 1. You have made a very good start to the course and have submitted 5 folders, one for each project in part 1 and a sketchbook. You use good quality watercolour paper for all exercises and your work is clearly labelled and well presented.

Feedback on assignment Demonstration of technical and Visual Skills, Quality of Outcome, Demonstration of Creativity

Project 1. Mixing and applying watercolour.

It’s essential to develop as wide a repertoire as possible of marks and awareness of the boundaries of what you can achieve with different brushes and materials. You have experimented well with loading your brush, varying the depth of tone and creating a range of marks. Well done. You have created a very competent shoal of fish and the leaves sketch has leaves of varying tone. You have completed the exercise where you are required to wash off the leaves competently. I think the final layer of leaves could have benefited from having a little more pigment in order to create more depth between the layers.

Project 2. Laying washes.

These exercises represent some of the basic building blocks of watercolour painting and take practice to achieve well. Your first flat wash is very even, well done. Your tonally graded washes don’t have enough gradation in them though the second attempt is better. It is perhaps easier to achieve this with a dark colour. Start with a very intense dark blue and practice getting it completely clear by the bottom of the page.

The mixed wash requires two colours of paint, and by combining them in the middle you achieve a third colour. I think you need to practice these a little more Patricia. This is starting to work but what you achieve at the bottom of the painting should be around the centre, and the cross over between the phtalo blue in the the middle section needs to be smoother, no obvious lines. It is definitely improving in your second attempt and you will have the opportunity to keep practicing this the more you paint.

Project 3. Resist techniques.

You have experimented very thoroughly with the wax and oil pastel resist Patricia, well done. The experimentation with the masking fluid has worked well too and has produced interesting images. I still think you can afford to use stronger colours for your washes. Try to get more pigment in your initial wash rather than over layering at this stage. It’s good practice to learn to control the paint in an individual layer before moving onto overlaying several washes. It might be worth you buying 2 or 3 artist quality pans of watercolour, if you are currently using student quality paints, just so that you can see the difference in the quality of the paint. The pigment is much richer in artist quality paints.

Your research with the madras cloth is complex and a worthwhile exercise. It looks like you have learnt a lot from trying out the gum Arabic and the gouache in this way too. You are starting to get some very nice qualities. Your experimenting is starting to pay off. Well done.

Project 4. Making marks in different ways.

Again you have worked thoroughly here Patricia and have closely followed the instructions, well done. You have initially tried a variety of brushes on two different types of paper. I agree with you that the second blue attempt on the textured paper is more interesting and can understand why you find it distracting to think about specific clouds when trying out different brush strokes. You are beginning to capture definite movement and energy in your tree paintings. The third set of paintings might have benefited from more white space between marks or, again, more variation in the depth of colour in order to clearly see the variety of mark making. In fact you note this yourself in your blog and you also identify that you might benefit from some artist’s quality paints. Your notes on layers of paint application with the final tree painting are observant regarding letting the paint dry between applications. Your seascape in blue tones uses lifting off very well and has successfully captured an essence of the cloud formations.

Using a variety of brushes and tools.

You have tried three different brushes, lifting off and have gone onto try different tools. (If you do more than one painting on a day and don’t have a title, remember to date and number it so that I can refer to it).

I think you could have pushed yourself a little more in this section, particularly the surfaces and textures but you will have opportunities to do this throughout the course. Keep your mind open to the use of alternative brushes and tools as you progress with the course and remember to experiment regularly to develop you marks to use in your vocabulary of watercolour techniques.

Research Point.

You have done extensive research for this section, looking at artists including watercolour painters and a variety of styles of painting. You have given your own thoughts on the artists’ work and on one occasion you have recreated the work in pencil crayon. This is a very worthwhile exercise and is also worth doing in watercolour. In this way you can explore the techniques that artists use to create works that you admire and may wish to incorporate in to your own painting style and vocabulary. To push your research further you need to explore further how the works link into your own painting and progress.

Assignment 1.

You have sent several samples of preparation work with your final piece. In this prep work you consider three different compositions, different media and different styles. I think you would have benefited from doing close up work in the pencil sketches before moving on to the watercolour work. This would help you to make sure that you really look at what you are trying to capture and to make a clear attempt at the tonal qualities and the shadow on the cloth. I think you can afford to explore the use of the pencil, and perhaps darker pencils. The range of blacks and greys you can get from a 6B pencil for example are extensive. Try to be a little more expressive in your lines too, try working quite quickly in some of your sketchbook work and see what you capture. We are looking for self-expression and emotion as well as accurate renditions of objects. You will benefit across all areas of creative work from developing your drawing skills and I can see you have a competent drawing style already for recording basic shapes and positioning. You can afford to work bigger too and to be much braver and bolder in your drawing and mark making. ( I have just seen your other drawing prep work on the blog, I think it is a good idea to send all the prep work you have done for an assignment).

Your close up water colour work of the lemons and the pomegranates could also be pushed further too and you already have some very nice brush strokes and accidental qualities in the experimentation work with the close up fruit. In the pomegranates top left you are beginning to show some of the intensity of colour that is possible with watercolour. The yellow wash also works well on the top right piece. I think you could have experimented with more intense colour in the background too and again the shadows and tonal qualities could have been explored further at this stage.

Here is a study of dragon fruits by Elizabeth Blackadder. It is from this link where the image is at a better resolution. http://pinkpagodastudio.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/dame-elizabeth-blackadder.html

You can see how she captures delicacy and intensity of colour through the medium of watercolour. A way of working towards this is to do several versions of the painting. As soon as it starts to become overworked, start again. As you progress you begin to work out what it is essential to include and what is superfluous, but it does take quite a few versions when you are just starting out.

The colour study. I think this is quite successful. The actual fruits lack a little detail, but you have captured tonal qualities, and have tried an interesting wash on the background which I think works well with the pomegranate. You are right to think that the tablecloth would have worked better without the black lines. They at least need to get thinner and paler as they go towards the back. The shadows need more careful observation. I am pleased you are trying to incorporate what you have learnt from looking at Nolde’s work into your own painting here and have experimented with a new approach. This is also similar to Gaugin’s approach.

Your final painting, has some nice qualities but does not have the tonal boldness that your prep works have, It is more contolled than the prep work and loses it’s energy because of this, the loss of water marks particularly in the table cloth and background miss out on using the medium and it’s unique qualities. The composition would also have benefited from stronger directional light to pull out the tonal qualities and the shadows. The positioning of the fruit makes it look a little lost on the page. Look back at Nolde’s work again, for example, and consider how he frames his subject.

Sketchbooks Demonstration of technical and Visual Skills, Demonstration of Creativity

Thanks for including your sketchbook. Your sketch book work will need to be much more comprehensive in future parts of the course.

I recommend you also

Develop your drawing skills with daily practice
Extend the use of your sketchbook by working in a variety of media and doing original first hand observational drawings and sketches. These often become research work for eventual paintings.
Use your sketchbook for comprehensive working out of visual ideas prior to any painting.
Keep a variety of sizes of sketchbook including a small pocket sketchbook which you keep with you at all times.

Here is an example of how to use a sketchbook to research your ideas through drawing.

http://www.weareoca.com/fine_art/inside-sketchbooks-as-a-form-of-enquiry/

Learning Logs or Blogs/Critical essays Context

Thank you for sending your blog link. It is logically presented. It relates well to your exercises and shows evidence of self-reflection.

In terms of reflection, here is an article that looks briefly at different depths of reflection,

http://www.weareoca.com/education/learning-logs/

I would say your reflection is similar to point no. 3 on the whole. To push this further, to no.4, you need to think about and note how you are going to develop your own work and how the work is influenced by other artists’ work. ( You have just started to do this in assignment one). Where does your work sit in relation to the world of art that has already happened or is happening right now. That is something to think about over the coming months of the course as you begin to work on developing your own unique voice.

Suggested reading/viewing Context

After looking through the artists that you have researched on your blog another artist that comes to mind is Elizabeth Blackadder. You can see some examples of her work here on the OCA Student media resources page. Use the password and user name to login to the site as given on the Bridgeman link page. Here are two examples. The site has several.

http://www.bridgemaneducation.com/ImageView.aspx?result=12&balid=370113

http://www.bridgemaneducation.com/ImageView.aspx?result=5&balid=50704

Still worth a look for the composition of the image though. Another artist to look at is Hutchins-Puechavy. Here is an example of her lily paintings.

http://www.bridgemaneducation.com/ImageView.aspx?result=31&balid=248157

As the research point on page 44 suggests I think it is good at this stage for you to look at a variety of artists, as you are doing, and make notes about what you do and don’t like in their work. If you look at the library images provided online via the oca webpage – there are hundreds of watercolours to look at. You are also visiting galleries to look at work first hand which is essential.

Karen Armitage and Elizabeth Blackadder and Claudia Hutchens-Puechavy, as I have mentioned above, are all worth a look at as 20^th century watercolour painters.

Excellent that you have seen work first hand in the gallery and have benefited from this. Try to keep this up.

Pointers for the next assignment

Do lots of drawing practice as well as painting
Don’t feel you can only do each exercise once, do it until you are happy with it, try lots of versions if you need to.
Try to use a wider range of intensity of colour in your water colour paint. Don’t be frightened of using intense colours. This can work very well wet on wet too. Consider using artist’s quality paints. The tube paints you have bought may be artist;s quality , you don’t specify?
Continue to do the research work as outlined in the course booklet, as you have, plus your own research work as necessary for the development of your ideas and include this research in your log book.
Remember to show how your research feeds in to you rown ideas and experimentation.

I hope you will find this feedback useful Patricia as you move onto part 2 of the course. Any questions regarding the feedback here or your progress in Part 2 email me.

Tutor name:	Lisa O’Brien
Date	12/11/12
Next assignment due	To be agreed – Patricia is taking a short break to complete a Masters.

Miscellaneous: Taking a break

I’ve now prepared the parcel with Assignment 1 for sending to my tutor Lisa, and this will mark a break point in my course work. I will take some time off OCA coursework for personal and professional reasons. I’m planning to resume OCA studies in April 2013.

I’m not glad about the decision but I realized that I need to finish some other projects first before I can fully commit to studying art. I’ve only started the watercolour course 2 months ago, but it has already become part of my life, and I’ll miss it.

Not quite sure whether I’ll be able to do some “secret” work just for myself, like just experimenting when I have some leasure time. I might write update articles to the blog from time to time.

Bye bye for now.

Assignment 1

I started working on Assignment 1 around two weeks ago, with thinking about what I would like to paint. From the options suggested, I chose the still life with fruit option, because I was interested in painting natural objects’ colours. I had already gained some practice with the topic from the drawing course, where I struggled profoundly with detailed naturalistic observation. I was looking forward to trying out a different approach to the theme.

Preparatory studies

On the next food shopping occasion I discovered a very ripe, deep red pomegranate and thought this would be a good object to start with. I did a colour pencil study of the pomegranate. Not thinking about the possible conflict with assessment regulations, I made this in my drawing sketchbook instead on a loose sheet or in the watercolour sketchbook. I’ll include it here and will ask to ignore it if I submit that sketchbook for assessment of the other course.

During the next days, I bought some more fruit and tried out various combinations and arrangements. I put a blue linen table cloth on the living room table and placed the fruit upon it. I tried out different arrangements and paid attention to how objects’ shapes overlap and that the negative spaces look interesting and balanced. I then then found a first composition with 2 pomegranates, 4 lemons, and a banana. I made a sketch of this arrangement in the sketchbook.

Course instructions suggested to make several sketches to try out different compositions, but I did not want to draw a composition I didn’t like and once I had found one which worked for me, I did not want to change it anymore just for the sake of doing more drawings, for fear I couldn’t repeat a successful placement… So I tried out the same arrangement from a different point of view and made another sketch in portrait format, using the right half of an A3 sheet. This composition looked quite interesting too, but I preferred the first one and made another drawing in A3, this time trying to be a bit more detailed and work more on the tonal values.

Then I took a break from coursework because I had urgent other commitments, and there was also the journey to Oslo to visit the Emil Nolde exposition. I took up work on the assignment today. In the meantime, one of the lemons was spoiled, and the banana too, so I continued with a slightly modified arrangement of 2 pomegranates, 2 bananas and three lemons, but in the same setting of blue cloth on a table.

I repeated the process of finding an arrangement I liked, then made a compositional sketch in the sketchbook with my intended view for the final watercolour painting, and also tried out a different viewpoint for another compositional sketch. The second perspective was interesting because I could include the diagonal edges of the table, and because the table cloth structure was diagonal instead of almost exactly vertical. But I decided against this view because I found the first view more convincing with respect to the objects’ positions.

I made another tonal study in pencil of this arrangement, on the remaining left half of the A3 sheet, but this time in landscape orientation. In this arrangement I included the sofa behind the table as a background, because I found that it added a feeling of space and context to the composition.

Preliminary watercolour experiments

I had been very impressed by Emil Nolde’s watercolours and had the idea of trying out the technique of broad colour areas with black lines to identify object contours. I also had some ideas which techniques I might use for particular details of my fruit arrangement. I decided to begin with a watercolour of the whole composition to try out the broad colour approach.

I lightly sketched the object contours first, then colourized the broad areas of the blue table cloth, and yellow and read for the fruits. I added colours for the shades and colour blendings while the paint was still wet in some areas, but waited for them to dry in others. I reworked the colours in several layers and tried not to overdo because I knew that colours get muddy very quickly. I wanted the colours to be broken with my mixing, but not too much!

After everything had dried, I added black lines for the contours and the texture of the table cloth. This completely changed the overall impression and style of the painting. It had been quite light before, with the shaded areas approximately bringing out object shapes. The black lines added something very massive to the painting. I let everything dry and added another layer of yellow, orange and red which intensified the colouring and reduced the contrast resulting from the black lines. I enjoyed the experiment and like the painting, but I think I will do without black lines for the final painting.

Comparing my experiment to Nolde’s watercolours painted in this technique, I think Nolde has used watercolours with higher concentration, because his colours are much more intensive than what I have produced. Also, he has probably used a larger brush. I had a round one size 10 and think it did not load enough paint for obtaining the effect I wanted. I think I should have mixed more colour in advance and worked in a much bolder approach, doing the colours in one single go, letting everything dry and then use a finer brush than size 10 for the lines. But nevertheless I found the experiment quite interesting. It was also helpful because I used watercolour in tubes, rather than pans, for the first time.

Experimenting with techniques

During the last drying pauses of the first experiment, I began an experimental sheet for the other ideas. Here I tried using masking fluid for the table cloth texture (bottom right) and compared this to a painting approach (bottom left). I think the masking fluid works quite well, but I’m not sure whether the overall impression is not too pronounced. After all it is only a minor detail and shouldn’t dominate the painting. I also tried out sandpaper to create highlights on yellow surfaces (top left) – this might be nice for the highlights on the lemons.

The other two are blending experiments. I have a deep colour contrast in my composition between the (cold) blue table cloth and the (warm) colours of the fruit – yellow, orange, red and a tone of green in the banana. I thought a yellow wash might bind the objects together, and this might have worked because the blue of the table cloth has a slight greenish touch. But the wash experiment (top right) showed me that I would need much blue to get the tone I want for the cloth, or I would have to use a much lighter yellow for the wash.

I compared this to a version where I used pure prussian blue for the background against the orange and red of the pomegranates, and I think I like this better (top middle).

Another wash experiment is in the left bottom area. Here I applied a blue wash (spared out the lemons) and added a layer of red to obtain the purple colour of the sofa background behind the table. I think this colour mix works quite well. I also tried to create a stripy texture using a household brush for the red blend, but this did not work at the first go. I dried the brush and tried again on white background. This is more similar to the actual texture, although the colours are much darker. I think I would have to use a very dry brush with black (or very dark) colour on completely dried colour to make this work. But again, I’m not sure whether this type of detail really adds to the beauty and interest of the final painting.

I’m planning to approach the final painting tomorrow. I’d prefer to paint with daylight, so will see if I can start not too late.

Final watercolour painting

The final painting was quite experimental… I began Sunday morning and finished late in the afternoon, taking quite a few pauses between stages where I let the painting dry. Looking at it two days later, I think that it is sort of unfinished, but I will leave it as it is, just to document how far I got.

For the technical aspects, I chose to make a very light yellow wash at first to create some commonality between subsequent colours and reduce the contrast between the blue table cloth and the warm fruit colours. I used graded red-brown washes for the brown sofa background, and a fan brush to create a bit of corduroy cloth structure. I employed the masking liquid for the squared texture of the table cloth and then reworked the blue area because the pattern was too dominant, by wetting and then dissolving the pigment with a sponge and lifting it off with paper tissue.

I thought about reworking the sofa background and the fruits themselves, but in the meantime, the cats had played wildly in the living room and the fruit had fallen off the table, destroying my arrangement. So I did not touch the painting anymore and the overall impression and style of sofa and fruit is different from that of the table cloth. I think the sofa background would benefit from more intense colouring, and the lemons might have needed some more yellow layers and reworking the shaded areas. But on the other hand, I like the unfinished character of the painting and therefore I will not touch it any further.

During one of the pauses when the painting dried, I made an oil pastel drawing of the arrangement from a different angle. This was actually the perspective I had taken earlier in an alternative compositional sketch. For this drawing, I used Sennelier Oil Pastels for the first time. These are much softer than the inexpensive study oil pastels I had used before. I also used special oil pastel paper with a sort of woven surface texture which takes up more pastel material before it is saturated than standard drawing or pastel paper.

I’m not sure whether this drawing belongs to the watercolour blog (due to its character as a colour study for the assignment) or to the drawing blog (because it’s a drawing with which I explore a new tool). I’ll include it here because I find the thematic link more important than the technical aspect, and maybe also because these soft oil pastels permitted working with colours in a more painterly way. I do not really see it as a drawing anymore, it’s almost a painting, only that it’s done with paint in stick form.

So overall, I’m quite glad with my first watercolour painting. I really like how the table cloth looks like. I also liked that it was possible to rework the background area on the relatively robust watercolour paper. It just makes me want to paint more, and curious try out all kinds of things to achieve a variety of effects with watercolours.