Individual Theme Drawing
Given the way that I missed the mark for the 100 drawings assignment, I struggled to find an appropriate topic for myself for this assignment. When given the instruction to create something that could make my skills stand out among other applicants for an art-based job, the decision became a little harder. Since I'll be teaching an art classroom someday of an unknown age group, I wanted to keep my art true to my own style, but also kid-friendly, as some kids and parents would not appreciate a nude figure within fine art as others would. I've researched Jenny Saville many times before, but I chose to do more research to find a way to relate some of her mark making decisions to my own. One piece in particular interested me, titled "the mothers". The way she created a border for her piece but also drew beyond the border made a lot of sense for the motion in her work, and I felt that it would also complement my work well.
The next decision for me was content, and that probably took the longest to decide. I have no opposition in drawing a clothed figure, but that isn't something that I practice often. The clothes a figure may be wearing has the potential to say so much in itself that I generally just keep them out of my work and focus on the anatomy alone. A couple weeks ago, a good friend of mine published his first book, and sent me a photo of himself in a suit when celebrating his success with friends. He's sent me many like it before, as someone who works in a professional environment, but decided to seize the opportunity to ask if I may include him in a work of my own. He happily granted my permission to use his photos as reference, and I began to draw.
I began penciling in the figures, and paying especially close attention to his hands. I've never been great at drawing hands, but I've improved tremendously over the course of this semester with practice. I decided that his hands portrayed the identity that I wanted in this work on their own, and thought that omitting the faces from the figures had the potential to derive more information about the scene in the drawing than who was involved in the scene. I began this project with the intention of using water color paint and micron pens, but came to the conclusion that I was unable to afford the amount of micron pens that it would take to finish a work this large. I had already used watercolor paint for areas of skin, but after using pastels to complete the darkest suit, I noticed that I would have had to severely adjust the tone for the water colors to achieve a scale that could compete with opaque black pastel, which would have resulted in brighter colors that I didn't quite want. I continued experimenting with warm and cool skin tones, I feel quite successfully, considering that many of my reference photos were black and white.
The title of the piece is "Neon Grey", and is a nod to repetition and stagnancy in the corporate work place being disrupted.
The next decision for me was content, and that probably took the longest to decide. I have no opposition in drawing a clothed figure, but that isn't something that I practice often. The clothes a figure may be wearing has the potential to say so much in itself that I generally just keep them out of my work and focus on the anatomy alone. A couple weeks ago, a good friend of mine published his first book, and sent me a photo of himself in a suit when celebrating his success with friends. He's sent me many like it before, as someone who works in a professional environment, but decided to seize the opportunity to ask if I may include him in a work of my own. He happily granted my permission to use his photos as reference, and I began to draw.
I began penciling in the figures, and paying especially close attention to his hands. I've never been great at drawing hands, but I've improved tremendously over the course of this semester with practice. I decided that his hands portrayed the identity that I wanted in this work on their own, and thought that omitting the faces from the figures had the potential to derive more information about the scene in the drawing than who was involved in the scene. I began this project with the intention of using water color paint and micron pens, but came to the conclusion that I was unable to afford the amount of micron pens that it would take to finish a work this large. I had already used watercolor paint for areas of skin, but after using pastels to complete the darkest suit, I noticed that I would have had to severely adjust the tone for the water colors to achieve a scale that could compete with opaque black pastel, which would have resulted in brighter colors that I didn't quite want. I continued experimenting with warm and cool skin tones, I feel quite successfully, considering that many of my reference photos were black and white.
The title of the piece is "Neon Grey", and is a nod to repetition and stagnancy in the corporate work place being disrupted.
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