Friday 28 February 2020

Tacit presents:

20(2020)

Opening night at Tacit gallery, Wednesday 4 March marks the celebration of Tacit's 20th anniversary.
20(2020) is a massive group exhibition featuring some 135 artists who have exhibited at Tacit in the past 20 years. All artists are working on a 20 inch x 20 inch canvas.

You can imagine how challenged I was drawing graphite on canvas! Luckily TJ Bateson gave me some very helpful tips on canvas prep. Eight coats of gesso and fine sanding between each coat resulted in a porcelain smooth surface that responded well to liquid graphite and dry graphite pencils. For this exhibition I did a variant of my 'Aeronaut' drawing and Tacit kindly put it on their invites!


Some of the other artists featured include Terri Brooks, Damon Kowarsky, Rosemary Harris-Arnott, Denise de Keyzer, Nadeen Lovell, Helen McInnis, Mark Seabrook and Lisa O'Keefe.
Would love to see you there on opening night - it promises to be one heck of an opening!

Wednesday 26 February 2020

Red Chalk Lion

Demonstration Piece

I did this drawing yesterday as a demonstration piece during my Wednesday class. When using the chalks people often try to draw the 'colour', but you need to think of the tone instead. The best way I can explin is to look at your colour reference and ask yourself; 'How would I draw that in graphite?' Then, think of the red chalk as your first tone (like an HB maybe). The tone of the paper in this instance is the mid tone. The Sepia and Umber chalks are the dark tones.

I felt a full demo drawing would help get across the idea of using the Sanguine/Sepia/Umber chalks as tone not colour. My lion is a bit wonky proportionally, but he looks like a lion at least!

Time: One Hour
Medium: Staedtler Mars Pastel Pencils as the skull drawing. Some tortillion use, some kneadable eraser/blue tack  lifting off.
Paper: Strathmore Toned Tan
Reference: Photo of a Werribee zoo lion taken in 2018




Monday 10 February 2020

Sanguine (red chalk) drawing

...in the Masters footsteps...

Before the invention of the modern graphite pencil the most commonly used drawing medium used by artists were natural occuring chalks/earth pigments. Sanguine (Hematite) is a red-brown iron oxide chalk that is often used and was a favourite tool of the Renaissance masters. When teamed with toned papers and touches of black and white you can create wonderfully sculptural forms.

My students and I will be exploring these techniques this term. Although I have many different sanguine, sepia and umber pencils already I couldn't resist this set of Staetdler Mars pastel pencils currently on special at Eckersley's.

Now having purchased a set I had to try them out! 

For this exercise I choose to do a sketch drawing of a skull. Hamlet lives on top of my supplies cupboard, so I took him down, dusted him off and set up my drawing station:


You can see how I have put Hamlet on white paper and behind him so I have a clean veiw and nice shadows cast by the direct lighting set up. Also, my tools are to hand, the Stadtler pencils as well as some conte blocks, a tortillion, kneadable eraser and white pvc eraser pen. Additionally, I did a quick sketch in my visual diary in pencil to make sure I understood the proportions correctly.

I am drawing the final on Strathmore 180gsm tan toned paper. 
Some steps along the way showing you the progression:







And the final result. This took approximately 2 - 3 hours from initial pencil sketch to this final result:


Because this was a fairly quick sketch, it is a bit rough and ready. However, I enjoyed exploring these pencils and like the result. Using a toned paper means that all the mid-tones are established at the start and the drawing is done in the highlights and dark areas. I am going to use these pencils again and try a more refined drawing next. 

Great fun!