Drawing 1: Report for Assignment 1

Formative feedback

Student name	Kate Griffin	Student number	514183
Course/Unit	Drawing Skills 1	Assignment number	1
Type of tutorial	video/ written

Overall Comments

Good work so far, the foundation course has equipped you with a good base. I enjoyed the project work, indicating to me that you can think creatively ‘out of the box’.

You struggle to find a happy mean between ‘correct’ analytical drawings (cold and safe but showing technical competence) and more personal drawings with a sense of atmosphere and psychological weight. This is only to be expected at the beginning of a course with a strong focus on traditional drawing skills, and this dilemma will continue to cause tensions throughout this course. Submitting a number of drawings for assignment therefore is a good strategy as it allowed you to explore a wider range of drawing approaches.

What may be useful now is to evaluate from hindsight which of those is the strongest. You started to do this already. Return to your assignment submissions at end of part 4 before you commit to your own drawing project for part 5. The added distance will make you look at earlier work with fresh eyes. A ‘wholesale’ review of all assignments and project work at part 4 level could help you identify your own project at a later stage.

Assignment 1 Assessment potential

You may want to get credit for your hard work and achievements with the OCA by formally submitting your work for assessment at the end of the module. More and more people are taking the idea of lifelong learning seriously by submitting their work for assessment but it is entirely up to you. We are just as keen to support you whether you study for pleasure or to gain qualifications. Please consider whether you want to put your work forward for assessment and let me know your decision when you submit Assignment 2. I can then give you feedback on how well your work meets the assessment requirements.

Please let me know at some stage if you are enrolling to drawing or painting degree. At present your paperwork indicates that you are a leisure learner, but in your email you seem to indicate differently?

Feedback on assignment

Demonstration of technical and Visual Skills, Quality of Outcome, Demonstration of Creativity

As discussed in video tutorial this is an ambitious and technically complex submission. You addressed weaknesses in composition from the previous preparatory studies, in particular you pre-empted my critique of suggesting stronger cropping and taking the objects to the margin of the paper. You may want to push this cropping even further, cutting into objects (as you begin to do with table and cloth) to create stronger immediacy and stronger balance of negative space in relation to positive.

Another area you could push for interest is that of mirror and reflection and distortion. As one of the research points for part 2 is about multiple viewpoints (p 51) this could be a practical way of considering further what happens if you present multiple viewpoints in one drawing?

These suggestions are to furnish your future work for part 2. I am not asking you to redo any of your assignment 1 work, as I believe you have done sufficient work to demonstrate your understanding of this initial project.

This penultimate study of your assignment is fresh, personal and freer than the one discussed prior above. It may not be fully correct (the cup looks oddly overly elongated and precariously balanced), but this is exactly why this drawing has stronger psychological impact than the ‘correct’ one. The sense of precarious balance works in tandem with the subtexts you refer to in your blog. There is a sense of loss and introspection you communicate very effectively with this sensitive study. The objects seem to float and almost vanish. Your choice of media of ink with softer medium presumably is more experimental – you are taking greater risks with this drawing. This risk taking is a positive thing to hold onto for future work, as it makes the drawings more interesting.

Project work and Sketchbooks

Demonstration of technical and Visual Skills, Demonstration of Creativity

For assignment 2 please send me your sketchbooks per post so I can get a sense of how you use them. A selection of research for part 2 should also go into your parcel (different paper tests, larger scale etc). Continue to document on blog so I can access some of your project work there, to safe postage and avoid risk of loss or damage through post.

Project 1 Form and Gesture: nice fresh approaches of beach combing and assemblage, also tree shape.

Emotion: liked the use of zoom in and blue for one of the section in Calm. Anger: bottom right corner looks interesting. Concentrated sensitive marks yet conveying a sense of seething or hurt.

Texture- ok – room to investigate frottage further check out Max Ernst search engine both Ernst and frottage for images and see hyperlink http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/f/frottage

Anna Amadio http://www.annaamadio.com

Beach Hut collage –g good to see you do self-motivated visual research. As discussed – if you find a way of loading your images so I can enlarge them when I click on them, it would help with the finer detail here.

Project 2 Groups of Objects:

Initial experiment on patterned paper – I agree this didn’t work out, but you demonstrate sufficient critical ability to address yourself. The second attempt on brown paper much more convincing. Having said that, your taking risks is a positive way of going about learning to draw. You can’t play safe all the time, the drawings will betray that safeness. Patterned or found supports may hold some future – check out this website of artist Davi d Eager Maher http://www.davideagermaher.com/

Shadows Blocks of Tone:

I very much like the way the initial image comes across:

In future put scale references with your images on blog, alongside a number or title as this makes it easier to cross reference when giving feedback?

I like the personal language you develop here, and the way you contrast marks from longitudinal surface to stippling of grainy background, and then those stripes again – this time found in the glass object (presumably standing in for cut glass?). It is an unusual object that conjures a sense of a bygone time. This in connection with the darkness of surrounding space bring to mind late 19th/early 20th century artists like Georges Seurat (whose drawings are magical), Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard. The psychological latent drama of this drawing also makes me think of Lucian Freud’s still life and interiors.

Your developmental work exploring different textures and hatching found a solid and convincing conclusion in the Wooden Bowl – a good analytical drawing with personal touch. There is room to push reflections further in part 2 – I also felt that when looking at your assignment work. Reflection can also be addressed through a full-scale mirror or window panes (interior).

Learning Logs or Blogs/Critical essays

Context

Odilon Redon: succinct summary of technical innovations Redon has brought to drawing and some appreciation of his unusual subject matter and treatment. We discussed context research in tutorial. Be careful with long surveys in future, better to focus on one or two key images you can interpret in greater depth. We discussed the potential for analysis when comparing two images by different artists, especially if from different era, as this allows to contrast similarities and continuities against differences and ruptures (contemporary qualities differing from traditional or historical drawing for example).

Try and get into the habit of using Harvard Referencing from the beginning. The guide on this you can get from student website resource tab, I attach it for now.

Documentation: we discussed use of image software to address exposure and lighting, de-saturation and contrast – all useful tools to test to see if you can improve the difficult task of documenting drawing on paper.

Tutor name
Date	8th September 2016
Next assignment due	8th November 2016

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