Project 3
Exercise 1
For this exercise, I chose an image that I took for a previous exercise but decided not to use. It is a shot of a gravel road leading up to a stately home near my house. The picture includes many features that I have focused on in this part of the course, and these are features I would love to practice further.
Reflecting on the previous piece of research I completed, I decided I would like to recreate this scene in a similar style to that of Peter Doig. I used a similar technique myself in Cloud Formations and Tone, using pastels to form the tonal areas and shapes of the cloud and then a cotton pad to smudge the areas together.
Originally, I attempted the drawing in coloured pencils, but as you can see below, I decided against this. I felt that the desired appearance and effect that I wanted would not be achievable with pencils.
One particular sentence in the briefing caught my attention – “Test your growing skills and show that you can work beyond the expected.” In previous exercises there has been a specific sort of guideline, however, in this exercise I felt that I had free rein so I just went for what felt good for me.
I’m satisfied with how this piece turned out. I spent a couple of hours on it, layering and adjusting and smudging it to an outcome that I felt happy with.
I wish very much that I had taken progress photographs, but it always slips my mind, frustratingly.
I began by marking all the areas on the page in the base colours that I would be using. Mapping out these areas helped me wonders. Previously, my tutor advised me against outlining as I tended to strongly rely upon this in my work. I’m sure that beforehand I would have made the decision to loosely outline these areas, but I can see now that simply shading them in was the right approach.
I then began to build upon these areas, adding the areas of darker and lighter colours where I could see and using a cotton pad to smudge them together along the way. I spent a long time layering and layering the different tones and, although this was slightly tedious, I am able to see its effectivity.
Trees are an area that I have struggled with in the past, so I wanted to use this task to experiment with bettering them and seeing how it would be possible to do this. Layering the different shades of greens and adding varied pressure on the different trees worked wonders in the depiction of their form and their perspective in regards to where I was when I took the photo. I tried to show the depth in this piece by smudging the furthest trees more than the ones in the foreground. I also lessened my attention to detail in the trees in the background, to show that the those in the foreground are clearer and more defined to me.
Saying this, I can see now that the bushes are all of similar form and, like the trees, this wouldn’t be the case. I’ve made note to return to this later on to alter this. See below.
My inspiration for this piece, as well as the previous Cloud Formation exercise, was Peter Doig’s series of The Chiltern Hills. As you can see, his work is hazy and distorted. I wanted to achieve a similar effect in this piece, and although I’ve not quite attained as accurate a result as I had in mind, I’m still satisfied with the outcome.
Alteration
To give the impression of the bushes in the foreground being closer to me, all I needed to do was better define them. The closer a subject is to the viewer, the more focused it will be; I hadn’t accurately depicted this in the previous version of this piece, however, I feel that the drawing is stronger with this alteration.
The varied tones and texture upon the first few bushes, fading out the further the bushes get away from me really added to the depth of the piece, and strengthened the entire thing.
Jesy Gilkes 