Self-reflective essay

Looking back to this, I can’t say if it was easier or more difficult than the first one. My goals were to focus less on details, increase the speed of my drawing, get better with sketching and mostly be more confident with my own work. Comparing the exercises during this semester to those from the first semester, the tasks were certainly more challenging. We did not only focus on the model herself but we started to pay attention to the environment, atmosphere and shading, too. However, they were not only challenging I found them also more interesting and creative. When I reflect on my work during this semester, I can capture them much faster, although I am still much focused on details. I am trying to be quick but precise at the same time. In my opinion, I am starting to develop my own sketching style which still is not what I want it to be, but I am able to work with it without feeling frustrated.

I really would like to develop my drawing style to a uniform art style but I need to work really hard for very long time to achieve that. I am aware that a consistent art style is something which takes many years to develop and working on it will never end. In the past months, I have become fond of combining drawings and sketches with handwriting. When I look at sketchbook pages of Melanie Ford Wilson, her drawings are something that I would like to achieve in the future. Her semi-realistic style combined with handwriting is very precise and there is a story behind every piece of her work, which shows her creativity. I plan to buy a new sketchbook for summer to practise loose sketching or semi-realistic drawing combined with hand-written text or independent words which can improve my drawing skills as well as my illustration ideas, which is very important to me as an illustration student.

I need to start sketching with different media. For my sketches, I usually use a mechanical pencil with 4B graphite lead but I want to try working with a variety of dry media such as charcoal, Gioconda, soft and oil pastels, pen and markers, or wet media like watercolours, acrylic paint or gouache. Gay Kraeger’s or Cathy Johnson’s watercolour sketches mixed with black line marker inspire me to work more on using wet media more than I do.

Picture no.2: Cathy Johnson’s sketchbook

                                  Picture no.1: Gay Kraeger’s sketchbook                                                                                               

I know that I usually go with my mechanical pencil because I feel like I have more control in what I am doing, although I am not erasing my sketches anymore, but with watercolours I am not able to erase light parts of the picture and I have to work on the picture as a whole, which is exactly the thing I need to do. It would make my drawings more expressive and looser. In my sketches from the Hive I can see that the more comfortable I was, the better and looser my sketches were. I can compare my three sketches of my classmate Kristina. It is obvious that I was quite tense during the first one where she is sitting next to a bookshelf, drawing. The other two sketches of her lying on a sofa and where she is drawing in an armchair are definitely looser and more accurate. But I don’t want to improve only in drawing people. One of the lessons reminded me that I need to start drawing animals, which is one of my biggest struggles, even bigger than human anatomy. I should probably start with the anatomy of different animals and their skeletons because I think it’s the best way to understand how they move and then naturally sketch as much as possible. I will probably visit a zoo during

the summer holidays to sketch animals in their natural environment and their movements, which may be very useful for me as an animation student.

                                   

                                                                            Pictures no. 3,4,5: Sketches of Kristina

                                 

When I compare my charcoal drawings from the first semester and from the second semester, I think I can say there is a definite improvement. My favourite charcoal technique is erasing charcoal to make dramatic light and I am happy with those four homework drawings of dark, spooky compositions. I think the subtle lights in the darkness make the drawings mysterious and a little scary. On the other hand, I still struggle to make tonal drawings using charcoal. Someday I would like to achieve a result like a Slovak artist Lukáš “Lukéro” Krč, whose charcoal, graphite pencil and soft pastel artworks are mesmerising. Everything is smooth, realistically shaded but also textured and expressive at the same time. I still can’t achieve a tonal variety of many different shades with charcoal, but I am doing my best and I am sure that with more practice I will be able to shade with charcoal and make realistic yet textured drawings.

Picture no.6: Lukáš Krč’s drawing

Although I wanted to use more coloured media, I didn’t have many chances to use colour this semester. We usually worked with charcoal or graphite pencil, however, I made few drawings/paintings using colour, for example, a portrait of my favourite singer or two drawings from the lecture, which are done with coloured pencils, or drawings of architecture are mixed media combined with watercolour. Although I use coloured media quite often, so I am usually confident with them, these times it was a challenge for me. When I work with coloured pencils it always takes many hours to finish a drawing because I focus on details and I want to make it as realistic as possible, while this semester I focused on the speed and I made it as simple but as three-dimensional as possible.  My watercolour paintings are mixed with lines drawn with charcoal (the cathedral) or line marker (polish crooked house). I used watercolours to set the mood of those pictures. In the picture with the crooked house, I used vibrant colours to make it “fevered”, like a hallucination, where nothing looks normal. In the picture with the cathedral, I used more realistic, earthy tones to show real colours of the majestic building to show how transcendent it really is and I also wanted to add an “old” sepia look like we can see in old paintings.

Picture no.7: Crooked house

Picture no.8: The Cathedral

                                                                                        

When I look at my other portraits from the sketchbook or from the lessons and compare them to my self-portrait from the first semester I can’t really say what else I have improved, because I used a different style and I was drawing from photos, not a mirror. However, when I compare them to my previous portraits I had drawn from photos, I can say that my speed clearly increased, because a year ago I wouldn’t have been able to draw a portrait on A3 sized paper in less than an hour. Of course, it is not as detailed as I would usually draw from a photo but details weren’t the main point of this task. I am quite happy with the proportions although they are not completely accurate and now I can see which angles and proportions are wrong. I am satisfied with shading on the portrait of my friend because he looks three-dimensional and his face is coming out of the picture. It does not work very well in the drawing of an old photo of David Bowie and I think it’s because of the white background which does not match with shadows on his face.

Picture no.9: Portrait of a friend

Trying to capture movement was very challenging for me because it was my first attempt. I can say that my homework drawings are clearly better than my drawings from the lecture. Nevertheless, when I compare them to Patricia Hannaway’s drawings of movement my sketches are still not loose enough and I need to improve my anatomy drawing skills. As an animation student, I know this is the main thing which I need to practise a lot and I plan to do it during the summer break. I should try to draw movement with the action line which is, according to Patricia Hannaway, the best way to start drawing a human figure in action. Again, I have focused too much on the realistic portrayal of the figure, which makes me slower and unable to capture the movement quickly enough but I try to do it quickly which makes it more anatomically incorrect.

Picture no.10: Patricia Hannaway’s drawing

Picture no.11: My drawing of movement

In the conclusion, I think I am more aware of my mistakes; I just need to be brave and go out of my drawing comfort zone, which I do more and more, especially in sketching and observational life drawing. My drawing and painting skills have certainly improved during this year and so have my observational skills. My most appreciated improvement is definitely sketching human body anatomy and proportions because before I started with life drawing lessons I couldn’t draw figure at all. This module also improved my reflecting, evaluating and criticising skills which I can use on my own work to enhance my drawing skills. Overall, I am happy with my progress and I hope that next year I will be much better than I am now.

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Bibliography

Bahr, B. (2008). American Artist: Drawing. 1^st ed. [pdf] pp 62-63. Available at: http://www.utdallas.edu/~melacy/pages/Drawing/Patricia-Hannaway.pdf [Accessed 19 Apr. 2017]

Gregory, D. (2017). An Illustrated Life. 1^st ed. Cincinnati, Ohio: HOW Books, pp. 104-109, 138-143, 250-255.