Observational Drawing | artportfolio

observation artists

Francisco de Zurbarán

Between 1623 and the 1650's Zurbaran was the leading painter in Seville. By 1629, he was the city's official painter. Most of his paintings were based off religious orders and influenced by the realism of Caravaggio. His work is very direct and spiritual.

Zurbaran later became famous for his still life paintings such as "Still Life with Lemons, Oranges and a Rose" (1633), and a "Labors of Hercules".

The most impressive thing about his work is his ability to capture light and shadows.

Jean- Baptiste- Simeon Chardin

Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin (November 2, 1699 - December 6, 1779) was an 18th-century French painter. He is considered a master of still life.

Chardin was born in Paris, the son of a cabinetmaker, and rarely left the city. He lived on the Left Bank near Saint-Sulpice until 1757, when Louis XV granted him a studio and living quarters in the Louvre.

Chardin entered into a marriage contract with Marguerite Saintard in 1723, whom he did not marry until 1731. He served apprenticeships with the history painters Pierre-Jacques Cazes and Noel-Nicholas Coypel, and in 1724 became a master in the Academie de Saint-Luc.

I was extremely impressed, not only by his use of color and shades, but how accurately he made glass.

Giorgio Morandi

Giorgio Morandi (July 20, 1890 – June 18, 1964) was an Italian painter and printmaker who specialized in still life. His paintings are noted for their tonal subtlety in depicting apparently simple subjects, which were limited mainly to vases, bottles, bowls, flowers and landscapes.

I liked the texture of his work and the pastel colors he uses, but I found that the work was too 2D and not realistic enough

Jenny Saville

Jenny Saville paints female nudes in extreme states of grotesque exaggeration—deformed, obese, brutalized, or mutilated—working against the male-dominated history of idealized portraits of women. “I want to be a painter of modern life, and modern bodies,” she says. The morbidity of Saville’s human subjects, often bleeding or violently gripping their own flesh, bears a stark resemblance to her portraits of butchered animals, both grotesque and objectified. Working in a style with various links to Lucien Freud and Peter Paul Rubens, Saville takes many of her themes and subjects from a critical observation of everyday people—American women in shopping malls, patients being prepped for liposuction, and even her childhood piano teacher. “I was fascinated by the way her two breasts would become one,” she says of the latter, “the way her fat moved, the way it hung on the back of her arms.”

Personally, I find the work of Jenny Saville quite disturbing which is her purpose. I don't like the way she 'butchers' the human face. Having said that, I do appreciate her use of color.

Luc Tuymans

Luc Tuymans is considered one of the most significant and influential contemporary painters working today. He is one of the key figures of a new generation of figurative painters who have continued to paint during a time when many believed the medium had lost its relevance. In the context of the new information age, many artists felt that painting was a deeply conservative form of expression which did not match the heterogeneous nature of contemporary experience. Tuymans' work specifically addresses the challenge of the inadequacy and 'belatedness', as he puts it, of painting. He is also famous for his holocaust paintings.

I like the simplicity of his work but found that it was a bit dull to look at

David Hockney

David Hockney, (born 9 July 1937) is an English painter, draughtsman, printmaker, stage designer and photographer. An important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential British artists of the 20th century.

Hockney has a home and studio in Kensington, London and two residences in California, where he has lived on and off for over 30 years: one in Nichols Canyon, Los Angeles, and an office and archives on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood, California.

I love the colors David Hockney uses

past observational drawings

In Grade 9, we did a lot of work on observational drawing. Here are a few of my works from then.

Things I Did Well

I'm very proud of the shading I did. I think that I was really able to capture the tonal qualities in what I was drawing
Proportions of items

Things to Work On

The main thing I need to work on is not outlining the things I draw. This is because the outline makes them look 2D and not 3D.

For our DP Visual Arts Course, it is essential that we continue to study different artists and take inspiration from their works. This concept of learning from other artists and being influenced by them is not new. In fact, this is the exact way that most artists learned. For example, during the Renaissance, all artists would apprentice other artists until they would be inspired by their work, themes and ideologies. Euan Uglow was a British painter who was so heavily influenced by his teacher William Coldstream that he moved schools with him.

euan uglow

Euan Uglow was a British painter, most famous for his still lifes and nude paintings. His work was mostly based around the art historical traditions, though he often captured contemporary life. He often painted his friends, political figures and nude models in a 'flattened' space using geometrical precision of composition. He worked very slowly; it sometimes took him an hour to just post the model and take their precise measurements. He was famous for the measurements he used when painting. Uglow first studied at the Camberwell School of Art where he met his teacher William Coldstream. In 1951, he followed Coldstream to the Slade School of Art for the next three years.

William Coldstream

Some people believe that William Coldstream was one of the most influential artists in the UK since the end of World War II. Coldstream studied at the Slade School of Art, and happened to eventually teach there at a later age. Before going back to the Slade School of Art to teach, Coldstream and a few other artists opened the Euston Road School in 1930 which was considered a very forward thinking school for the time. After World War II he taught at the Camberwell School of Art where he taught his most famous student, Euan Uglow.

Coldstream would only work from direct observation. Measuring was a fundamental part of his working method, and this can clearly be seen to have passed down to Euglow's work as well. When he worked, Coldstream would hold his arm straight and measure with his thumb to his brush and compare it with the elements in his painting. This let him paint without completely relying on conventional perspective. To measure, he would put marks on his painting as can also be seen in Uglow's work. Uglow actually took the measuring to an extreme with more measurements,m but it is evident that this was influenced by his teacher.

Why did he integrate measurement into his work?

“I take measurements so that the subject has a real link to the rectangle; it also gives me freedom to make a whole surface… I’m painting an idea not an ideal. Basically I’m trying to paint a structured painting full of controlled, and therefore potent, emotion. I don’t do wristy paintings because I want the brain to intervene between the observation and the mark;’ ‘Sometimes I like a painting to be like [the keys off] a typewriter going across the whole surface. A close friend, Georgia Georgallas, recalled a familiar expression; ‘The words he always used to say: “it’s got to have magic”. And the only way he could think of creating this “magic” was to be true to himself. He was ruthless with himself."

Uglow felt that if he did not take exact measurements, then it was only human nature to observe things differently to how they really were. Although something may look bigger from his perspective, it may not be like that in reality. Measurements helped him keep everything more realistic and true. I found that when I was drawing, everything look different if I kept both eyes open and if I kept on closed. This made it difficult for me to determine which one was the reality and which one I should draw. Measurements help avoid this problem, and give the exact proportions of the subject.

Uglow measured by positioning his subject and putting marks all around them and his canvas. He would take accurate measurements and then mark them on his canvas so that he could see them as he worked. Most of the time he did not remove his marks, even when the painting was completed in case he ever needed to refer to them again.

Uglow was also inspired by his teacher Coldstream who was famous to use marks and measurements in his own work. Although Coldstream used them much less, Uglow took the measurements to another extreme. There are also many other artists of the time who inspired Uglow.

Artists that Inspired His Work

Mondrian

Mondrian's work is very geometric. All of his pieces in this style are done in only the primary colours (red, blue and yellow) and then black and white. Squares and rectangles comprise of the entire piece and it uses very specific measurements.

Uglow was inspired by the very articulate use of measurements in his work and was inspired to do the same in his own work.

Rothko

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Newman

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I found Rothko and Newman to have very similar pieces of work

drawing drafts

1

The first exercise I had to do to kick off the observational drawing unit was to draw my hand in 10 minutes. All I had with me was an HB Pencil and an eraser. I placed my left hand in front of me and I started to slowly outline the shape of my hand with light and multiple strokes. I was extremely proud of myself when ten minutes were over. I had drown my hand very proportionally and all of the main outlines were definitely there. Although I didn't get to shade very much, I added some lights and darks. I thought that this was the way to go about observational drawing.

What I learned afterwards really changed my perspective on how to draw. What really differentiates a drawing and a realistic drawing is one with or without outlines. The problem with my initial drawing is that I had to outline the shape of the hand which stopped it from looking realistic.

2

In reality, what 'outlines' our subject from the background is the different shades and tones. It is quite difficult to draw something without outlining it first, and so Mr. Keys taught me a very useful technique. The technique includes steps such as tracing which some believe is cheating. However, I believe that artists are meant to use tools to help them and using them does not mean you cheat. Tracing allows you to focus on other parts of your drawing and not on the dimensions. In my opinion, if your artwork is famous for its precision, then you shouldn't be tracing but if you just need proportions as a tool to make your artwork, then it is perfectly fine. In Grade 9 I wrote an essay about this.

My biggest challenge was to draw the bent fingers. This is because it is so difficult to position them in the same way every time. Moreover, the angle from which I trace the hand is quite high and so I am not able to refer to that position again. The lengths of the fingers becomes inaccurate because I cannot look at them from the same angle and perspective again.

Next time I should take care with my shading and o it more neatly instead of with evident lines which stop the shades from looking realistic

I'll erase the outline around the hand as well to make it stand out from the background

Above is the traced version of the general shape of our hand. We got to this stage through two different steps.

1// Balance a plastic sheet on your hand and trace the shape of your hand (keep on eye closed to avoid peripheral perspective)

2// Place the plastic sheet on paper. Slightly lift it and trace with a pencil on paper underneath. This is the silhouette

From the entire drawing, I am most proud of the left side of the palm. This is because I think that the shading here is the best. I definitely got the proportions accurate as well. I used my pencil and really looked carefully at the lights and the darks. I found that I have an indent at the corner of my palm and I decided to darken this. Moreover, there was light shining on my thumb and so I used an eraser to emphasize this. In all, it is evident that there is use of shading in this drawing.

Next time, I will use the eraser much more to show the highlights. For example, I could have highlighted the right side of the palm and the thumb more as there was light reflecting there. I will also be more careful with my shading and make it neater by not shading in such prominent lines, but more lightly so that the layers build up. In this drawing the arm was done quickly and so the lines are all going in one direction. This makes the drawing look more like a drawing and less like an accurate hyper realistic drawing of a hand.

Here is the first step of my drawing. After rubbing the surface with graphite I lightly traced the shape of my hand on the paper. As you can see, it is very undetailed and is just a starting point. I decided to keep it very simple as I would now be drawing from a slightly different angle, and I did not want my initial sketch to confuse me.

drawing techniques for final piece

I was yet to draw my middle finger. The reason it is not sketched yet is because I was finding it difficult to replicate its initial position. Because of this, I did not know how to draw it from such an angle.

The shading this time is done in very circular movements so that you cannot tell where the pencil lines start and finish. It is much more realistic this way.

At this stage, I have begun to add the highlights with my eraser.

To help make the hand stand out, Mr Keys advised me to erase all around the hand so that the background becomes a lighter shade, and the hand looks more 3D.

Highlighting this vein/ Taking into account all parts of the hand/arm

3

I am the most proud of this section of my drawing. I feel like when you look at this part of the palm, it is almost as though you can pick up the skin. The flesh and fat is all visible and it very 3D. The technique that I used to achieve this is the highlighting with the eraser. The flesh is very realistic. Moreover, I achieved my goal of carefully shading in circular motions. Now it is impossible to tell where the pencil marks start and finish. The dark and light areas are highlighted and the different shades make the hand look realistic, achieving my goal.

process

abstract vs realism

Alyssa Monks

Alyssa Monks is an artist whose speciality lies in blurring the lines between abstract and realism art by layering different spaces and moments in her paintings. Her most famous artwork is her 10 year long water series in which she flips background and foreground using semi-transparent filters of glass, vinyl, steam and water over shallow spaces. Her most recent art consists of transparent landscape of infinite space over faces.

The tension in her artwork is achieved through the composition and surface quality of the paintings. Each brushstroke is of thickly applied oil paint with energetic strokes.

Hyperrealist Art

Hyperrealism is the genre of painting or sculpture which resembles a high-resolution photograph. It is considered to be an advancement from photorealism. The movement focuses on the details of the subjects. They often add subtle pictorial elements to the work to create an illusion of the reality which cannot be seen by the human eye.

Often, hyperrealistic art incorporate emotional, social, cultural and political thematic elements as an extension of the illusion.

Researching about Euan Uglow inspired me to look into the differences between abstract and art and realism. Do artists like Uglow who make realistic paintings using means such as measurement really make realistic paintings or are they abstract? What makes a painting realistic?

When I look at Euan Uglow's work, I do not find it realistic to what I see in front. Although his work may be very precise proportionally, I feel as though it does not represent reality accurately. I think that the only type of artwork that can truly be considered 'realistic' is hyper realism- when you can't tell the difference between a photo or painting.

Moreover, how do we know what is realistic if we all may be seeing things differently. What we see is base don our own sense perception, and so we all may be seeing things different. Maybe people who have a lazy eye or astigmatism are actually just seeing the world from another perspective which could be just as accurate and realistic as everyone else.