Cultural Trip: Florence

December 3, 2013

Florence

Had the wonderful opportunity to visit Florence, Italy for my illustration course cultural drawing trip and since I love travelling I made every moment of it. Florence was a beautiful place and had so many inspiring view, places, art and people to draw from. 

Everyday we visited different museums from the Uffiz to Santa Maria Cathedral, I even saw Michelangelo's David. 

For my sketches I set out improve my figure drawings, in context to their surrounding and in art, along with bits of artwork that I found interesting or couldn't take photos of. I also went to the Florence Christmas Market and Brahms violin and piano sonatas performed by Leonidas Kavakos and Yuja Wang at Teatro della Pergola.  

Advance Drawing: Around and About in Town

November 21,2013

Around and About in Town

For this weeks drawing task, I went into town and sat in a cafe and drew what was around me. While drawing I realized that there were some areas in my practice that I needed to work on. For future reference I made notes on: to first set out a small brief, give a purpose to the drawings and what information I could observe and record to make studies or narratives from.

St Fagans: Museum of Welsh life

November 5, 2013

Saint Fagens Museum

Went to Wales on a drawing trip with the task of Drawing people in particular environments, narrative from place, narrative from human activity. I also tried to concentrate on characteristic, expressions and gestures along with sketches of landscape.

Advance Drawing: Narrative Figures Continuation

October 22 - November 4

Session 4 &5: Narrative Figures

For the past two weeks I have been continuing the theme of narrative figures. In the first week we had a music student model for us as she played her violin including her yoga warm ups. I paid particular attention to her gestures, how she placed her hands for her instrument, the movement of her fingers and hands as she played, and her posture using mainly pencil, charcoal, and fin liner to remember the colour of the dress she was wearing.  

The following night I went to the "Cheltenham Philharmonic Orchestra" for location drawing of the members, continuing with my trade theme. Using water-soluble colour brush pens, I continued to observe and capture the slight gestures and movement of the musician while they played and using minimal fluid lines to quickly do so. I also did a longer study drawing of a cellist for reference on posture, because as a fellow musician I know that posture plays an important role into playing an instrument. 

  

    

The following week I went into Cheltenham's town centre to do more location drawings.

Sitting in a cafe I observed the interaction with figures and vehicles at a stop light, capturing these moments quickly using brush pens and pencil. 

I also looked into character development, focusing on expressions and how there are different ones for different moods or situations. Using online interactions with friends and family along with observing characters in a show that I watch, I sketched the different emotions that they had on using pencil and water-soluble graphite. I then took this exercise and implemented it into my other module "Sequential Illustration" for my characters expression.

Advance Drawing Narrative Figures: Drawing in Oxford -People places and interactions

October 8, 2013

Third Session: Drawing in Oxford  people places and interaction

While at the Ashmoleum Museum in Oxford I sketched some of the exhibition items that I thought were interesting and connected to the last session along with people viewing the display. Using both pencil and fine liner to create images with some detail and quick gestural markings to improve on my mark making. 

   

Advance Drawing Figures in Contexts: Trade

October 1, 2013

Seconded Session: Figures in Contexts

Having Laura Morris, a musician that plays the french horn in the Glouster's Orchestra, model for today to learn and observe drawing figures in context. While she practiced her instrument I was suppose to capture every slight movement she made and capture her engaging in her activity. I used water soluble graphite colour tint pencils to allow me to quickly draw the figure as well as add shading to capture the light source. I also varied my use of line to capture light gestures. 

Since I enjoy drawing musicians, I decided to continue drawing them in my own time.  Looking at some videos that I had recored of musical performances, I used water soluble graphite tint pencils along with watercolour to entrap the wide motions and slight gestures of the musicians playing their variety of instruments. 

Advanced drawing Anatomy: Knees, movement and the walk cycle

September 24, 2013

First Session of Advance drawing Module

First started with studies of the knees to see how the muscles and knee caps change through movement. For this I used both a regular graphite pencil and graphite watercolour for easy and fluidness for capturing all the elements.    

Then watching two different walking sequence video, I used charcoal to give the sense of motion through each movement playing close attention to the the legs, knees and ankles.

After studying with the video of motion sequences, I went into the town centre and did quick observational sketches of people walking using both watercolour and graphite pencil. As I sketched I was studying the way each person had a different walk and wondered what could be the cause, whether it was if they were holding something, their shoes, attitude or age.