A Critical Review of my Creative Practice
Observational drawing and accuracy are important to me, but what is more important is self expression, also having fun, which is why I first started. Most of my personal art started out as little doodles after being inspired by an art club, which had a workshop directed by a cartoonist to begin with. I remember him mentioning his art not having to look real, but to express an emotion instead, and I try to remember that whenever I make something. I value practical skill, but the essence of art, to me, is to be able to communicate a message or a feeling by giving it your emotion and making it personal. Although art can be influenced by society, it is extremely individualistic, which is why I feel like it is sometimes difficult to share with other people. It is like handing someone a much more personal view on yourself, without them knowing you.
This relates to my first Final Major Project in college, which was extremely influential to how I draw and paint now and how I carry the idea of art expressing an idea, but in the context of my Final Major Project, a very intense feeling. This project was called Reflection.
The artists in this project were Giovanni Civardi, Henri Matisse, Joseph Mallord William Turner, Patti Mollica and Paul Wright.
Giovanni Civardi undoubtedly had the most influence on how my technical skills developed. His books were extremely helpful in making my work a little less cartoon like and more realistic. In his book Drawing: A Complete Guide, there many pages that go into extensive detail on drawing techniques, drawing scenery, and drawing techniques, but I had a large interest in drawing people which had grown in my time in high school, so the section I was naturally drawn to was Drawing Portraits. Seeing what a professional portraiture artist considered when drawing put things into perspective for me and made me consider parts and planes of the face I had never thought to include before. It made me more deliberate in my observation of the face, considering what angle a line is at, or what facial features align with each other, which was very important for the project I was working on. For the project I am working on currently, this is also very important, since I am partly focusing on portraiture. What I learnt in my most influential project still inspires me today, and I intend to continue applying what I learnt.
Civardi, G. (2009) Drawing: A Complete Guide. Great Britain: Search Press Limited.
Henri Matisse was the first ever artist that encouraged me to work in colour, and his movement, Fauvism, to encourage me to look deeper into the meaning of colour, and colour theory. Through this, I was able to bring a lot of meaning to my paintings using them. Because I was focusing on my perception of myself, how others perceive me, and my reflection and how I felt about it, I found that more often than not, I used the colour blue.
Wikipedia (no date) Green Stripe. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wi
ki/Green_Stripe (Accessed: 01/02/2021)
Patti Mollica and Paul wright helped me establish what my style using acrylics was, an expressive style using a lot of paint, with a focus on obvious brush strokes to define the face, especially the area connecting the nose and the forehead.
Wright, P. (2018) Elder [Oil on linen]. Available at: http://www.paul-wright.com/work/elder (Accessed: 01 February 2021).
Mollica, P. Venice Canal [Acrylic]. Available at: https://pattimollica.com/arch-summary (no date) (Accessed: 01 February 2021).
Joseph Mallord William Turner influenced what I already knew about watercolour, but only slightly. Looking at his work at the time, and how he was able to establish so much atmosphere with just water colour was fascinating to me. His paintings had an ethereal feeling to them, the hills in his paintings only just visible, making them almost appear as apparitions. Unfortunately, I was more focused on developing my acrylic skills to pay more attention to water colour studies.
In my Illustration project: House, I am creating a wordless narrative, with a strong focus on life drawing and still life, which I feel has become one of my strengths. A while before I started my Illustration specialism, in skills week, I went to a drawing workshop, where I can recall a quote which has become very important to my creative practice in terms of observational drawing: Am I just looking at the object or am I seeing it? Can I remember specific elements of my object? A way to tell if you are just looking or if you are seeing is to try and recall part of what you are drawing. I knew I was doing this correctly, as I can still remember the pine cone I was drawing in the workshop having four specific scales that stood out more and were positioned in an s shape, and four more on the top which were opened wide and curved, much further away from the pine cones silhouette. This is helped by looking more at your subject than the drawing, 80% of your time should be dedicated to observing, 20% should be dedicated to drawing.
I have applied this to my observational drawing of me, my dog, and my house in my House project and have noticed that as I continue to use this technique, my fluency in drawing has increased. Angles that I need to sketch to form a silhouette become easier to see and position on the paper, and areas of light and dark that I need to observe become more obvious.
An artist called Shaun Tan has inspired me to look more closely at the tone of certain objects, which has lead to some self portraits which I really like, as they seem reminiscent of others I have made in the past focusing on tone, but were never that thought out.
Tan, S. (no date)The Arrival. Available at: https://www.shauntan.net/arrival-book (Accessed: 01/02/2021).
To develop this further, I would like to continue studying life drawing from what I’ve learned on the Foundation Diploma. Observational drawing has become more important as the year has progressed, as I feel that it opens up new ways for me to approach drawing, and continuing to do it will help me improve, but I also think it will help me in the future, where drawing from imagination will become more important.
Katherine Hughes Graphic Design Eportfolio 