Cafe Rouge

I thought i would brave doing another painting on the iPhone so this time i decided to do one indoors to try and avoid the difficulties of lighting that i experienced in the previous painting. I went into Cabot circus, sat down and looked for something to paint. I picked out the cafe 'Cafe Rouge'. Its red shop front and umbrellas stood out to me.

There was quite a lot to get into the small frame. it would have been very difficult to draw in each individual table and chair outside the cafe but from my perspective and the distance i was from the cafe they appeared as a single mass anyway so the quick, squiggly marks are sufficient to describe what they are. The same for the person in the bottom left corner. They are made up by blocks of colour but the contrast to the rest of the environment makes you see a figure.

This painting was much more successful than what i did a couple days earlier. Taking advantage of the zoom function in the Brushes app but then you don't get a clear picture of the whole frame. I do feel constrained to working on the small screen so moving to the size of an iPad is very tempting. If I compare my results between what i have done recently on my iPhone and what i did on the iPads in life drawing, i can see that the larger screen is much more efficient. I can achieve a more finished piece in the same amount of time.

Back Into Bristol

Went into town again today to do more sketching. Began the day by hanging out on Christmas steps to draw the narrow, steep lane full of crooked old buildings. Did a graphite sketch [Sketchbook pp. 17-18 ] to warm up and took a few photos to do some more drawing later.

Later that evening at home i decided to have a go at doing a digital painting using the reference i had. For this piece i wanted to focus on capturing the light and the variety of warmness and coolness of colours.

I kept my mark making loose and took time to decide what i wanted to add and remove in the composition. This was a 30 min painting so it is simplified but the majority of the work was put into correctly capturing the strong light on the tops of the buildings. I am still evaluating how minimal i can go with my mark making while retaining a sufficient amount of detail in forms for the audience to understand what they are looking at. For a rather short study i am very happy with how the painting turned out and even though i made the decision to simplify things down, there seems to be a sense of realism about the piece, which i believe comes through the correct depiction of the light in the scene.

The painting has atmosphere and the intensity of the light comes across well by over exposing objects like the chimneys and roof windows.

I have been continuing to educate myself on how to apply warmth and coolness to colours and this is really helping my understanding of lighting. For shadows, instead of using shades of black, i now use dark blues. I find this preserves the colour better and also it gives a sense of coolness to the shade. For highlights i now feel more comfortable with pushing colours to almost if not white to show the intensity of the light. I also overlay a wash of a warm tone of red or orange to depict the warmth coming from the light. I feel that i have used these new techniques successfully, if you compare the bottom of the buildings to the top you can compare the temperature of colours.

The temperature that comes through the paintings are the temperatures i experienced when i was physically out on location. It was rather cold sitting in the alley and sketching.

I plan to develop and apply these techniques to more refined paintings in the future.

Drawing in Bristol

Went out today to get a bit more drawing done for the module. Thought i would have a go at doing artwork in both my sketchbook and on my iPhone to compare results and see what i could achieve. I decided to pick a location that offered a lot of depth and many levels within the depth of field. I started off by sketching trying to apply a variety of techniques to move elements back and forwards in the composition. The first technique was to pay more attention to detail to elements in the foreground as apposed to those behind. I found this wasn't very successful, at least in my drawing as i was using the same weight of line throughout the image, as a result the composition felt pretty flat. [sketchbook pp. 7-8]

On the second try i used pencil and turned any big strictures in the background into simple shapes, removing any small detail. This seemed to give a better sense of scale when comparing the size of the people in the foreground to the buildings behind. [sketchbook pp. 10]

Lastly I did another sketch but incorporated different line weights. Objects in the foreground were drawn with a heavier line, using a brush pen, and the opposite for objects in the background, drawn in biro. This worked better than the initial sketch but without the use of colour i am making the task much more difficult for myself. [sketchbook pp. 11-12] Unfortunately i did not have any colouring materials with me today so i decided to move onto painting on the iPhone.



Painting on the iPhone gave me the ability to introduce colour but it had its difficulties and disadvantages. The reflective screen makes it very hard to see what you are painting when in bright light, this really offsets the appearance of colours as well.

Drawing with the finger is good for forcing myself to avoid smaller, unnecessary details, but it is still takes a while to get the hang of. Even using a small line weight it is very tricky to get precision in painting as you can't see the point of contact between your finger and the screen, so it is not until you move your finger out the way that you can see the mark you have made. This meant there was a lot of trial and error involved with mark making. For any future painting i feel it would be necessary to use a stylus instead to give me more control in my mark making.

OOOO i got an ideas!

Seeing as i will be looking at how to render forms at varying distances I'm obviously going to be paying a lot of attention to scale. If i draw something at a small scale and then blow it up much larger will it still communicate correctly and be readable as the same object?, and vice-versa if i draw something larger and shrink it down will it become to crowded and become just a miss mash of colours? It would be an exploration of how our eyes lie to us when we view our surroundings, at what point does what we recognise as an object from memory take over what we are actually viewing?

Starting small

Was sat in my Living room today and decided i was going to draw whatever i could see from sitting on the sofa. Decided on a lock and key from a chest of drawers. Gave myself a challenge of only using my finger and the track pad on my laptop to draw. Its interesting how the scales between the size of the track pad and the size of the computer screen play on your hand-to-eye co-ordination, its like you are holding a magnifying glass over what you are drawing.

Ended up with two final versions. The first is only what i observed when drawing the lock and key. For the second i put in some artificial lighting to add some warmth and coolness. Added texture as well to give the shapes a little more depth.

Starting Points

I just wanted to go back and refer some earlier pieces of work that i have done that have qualities that i want to explore further. Here are some examples below.

(Experimentation with colour temperature)

(Tones formed from a strong light source. Model is a Mr Josh Prior!)

(An image created on the iPad is a life drawing session)

(Image created on the iPad. The subject was based on one of Aesop's fables of the Lion and the Mouse)

All these images have a common quality of a loose painting style. Tones are established quite abstractly and in a limited number. The top two images also evidence my experimentation with light and temperatures of tone, after our workshop focused on this i felt a little more confident with applying the techniques to my work outside of the drawing space.

Getting on with work

So I have to admit i have been neglecting this project so far with having put all my time and effort in to ILLUS 220 but now i have established a clear direction for what i want to explore for this module.

I want to increase my understanding of knowing how to distribute detail in paintings, knowing how much and how little to apply for the viewer to recognise what I Have drawn. Big influence on the decision for this project are the Illustrators Neil Ross and Ashley Wood. Both utilise digital and analogue tools and processes but there is a strong consistency to their work. Strong qualities of the work is big bold brush strokes and attention to using minimal detail where needed. In my experience of drawing, when i am taking a realistic approach i try and capture every detail possible, regardless of scale. Now i have learnt that this is not actually the best approach because in reality the eye never captures everything at the same time. To go in and draw everything exactly would be to draw to much information. The same consistency of detail throughout the depth of an image can cause it to flatten, a good example of where this technique is used purposely is in art with isometric perspectives.

Here are the links to the work of Neil Ross and Ashley Wood.

Neil Ross

Ashley Wood