DIGITAL DRAWING

RESEARCH *FOLK ART*

Folk art

Folk art is the art of the everyday and is rooted in traditions that come from community and culture. It expresses cultural identity by conveying shared community values and aesthetics. Folk art encompasses a range of utilitarian and decorative media, including cloth, wood, paper, clay, metal and more. If traditional materials are inaccessible, new materials are often substituted, resulting in contemporary expressions of traditional folk art forms. Also folk art reflects traditional art forms of diverse community groups-ethnic, tribal, religious, occupational, geographical, age- or gender-based-who identify with each other and society at large. This kind of work is made by individuals whose creative skills convey their community's authentic cultural identity, rather than an individual or idiosyncratic artistic identity. And also folk art fosters connections between art and people with a creative spirit that unites all the cultures of the world. Folk artists traditionally learn skills and techniques through apprenticeships in informal community settings, though they may also be formally educated. Mater folk artists demonstrate superior levels of craftsmanship and creativity, often introducing new materials and innovations that express both traditional and contemporary imagery and values. In this way, traditional folk art forms evolve as dynamic living traditions.

Different types of folk art:

CONTOURING *LIFE DRAWING*

Contouring

Contour Drawing: A contour drawing shows the outlines, shapes and edges of a scene, but omits fine detail, surface texture, colour and tone (‘contour’ is French for ‘outline’). The illusion of three-dimensional form, space and distance can be conveyed in a contour drawing through the use of varied line-weight (darker lines in the foreground / paler lines in the distance) and perspective.

Blind Contour drawing: A blind contour drawing contains lines that are drawn without ever looking at the piece of paper. This forces you to study a scene closely, observing every shape and edge with your eyes, as your hand mimics these on paper. The aim is not to produce a realistic artwork, but rather to strengthen the connection between eyes, hand and brain: a reminder that, when drawing, you must first learn to see.

Gesture Drawing/Time Drawing/Movement Drawing: A gesture drawing is completed quickly – often in short timed durations, such as 20, 30, 60 or 90 seconds – using fast, expressive lines. Gesture drawings capture basic forms and proportions – the emotion and essence of a subject – without focusing on detail. Due to their rapid completion, they are a great way to record movement and action, as well as increase your drawing speed, confidence and intuitive mark-making skill. Gesture drawings are best completed with smooth, easily applied mediums (chunky graphite pencils, charcoal sticks, pastels, soft brushes dipped in Indian ink, for example), without the use of an eraser. They are often completed on large, inexpensive sheets of paper, where you can move your arm fluidly, be bold with mark-making, and not worry

Continuous Line Drawing: A continuous line drawing is produced without ever lifting the drawing instrument from the page. This means that, in addition to outlines and internal shapes, the pencil must move back and forth across the surface of the paper, with lines doubling back on each other, so that the drawing is one free-flowing, unbroken line. To avoid the temptation to erase lines, it can be helpful to complete a continuous line drawing with an ink pen, varying the line weight, as needed, to indicate perspective and areas of light and shadow. Like the drawing methods described above, this drawing method develops confidence and drawing speed, and encourages your eyes and hand and brain to work together. Continuous line drawings work best with in-depth observation of your subject, without interference from your thinking mind.

Artists that use contouring:

Pablo Picasso 

David Hockney

Kris Trappeniers

Vince Low

REASEARCH *LIFE DRAWING ARTISTS*

Life drawing Artists



Frank Aurebach
Frank Aurebach's work was usually figurative and is inspired by David Bomberg. Aurebach's work carries a lot of Expressionism techniques to extreme lengths. Even though his work is classed to be of this way Aurebach is not an expressionist painter. In his works also he uses thick layers of paint, which can also be known as impasto. He layers paint in a repetitive way which involves brushing and scraping. Sometimes the layers are so heavy it appears that the paint has been sculpted on other than painted on. I wouldn't say Aurebach is my favorite figurative artist. A reason I like his work is the layers of paint he uses on his work yet it's still clear of what the image is.




Alberto Giacometti 
In the 1930's Giacometti explored themes that derived from Freudian psychoanalysis such as sexuality, obsession and trauma and from this he developed a variety of different sculptural objects. Some were influenced by primitive art, but the most striking were those that resemble games, toys and architectural models. They almost encourage the viewer to physically interact with them, this idea was radical at the time. Late 1930's Giacometti abandoned abstraction and surrealism and became more interested in how to represent the human figure in a convincing illusion of real space. He wanted to depict figures being able to capture a palpable sense of spatial distance, so that we as viewers might share the artist's own sense of distance from his model, or from the encounter that inspired the work. The solution he use was whittling the figures down to the slenderest proportions. During the 1950's the art world was dominated by abstract painting, yet Giacometti's figurative sculpture came to be a hugely influential model of how the human figure might return to art. His figures represented human beings alone in the world, turned in on themselves and failing to communicate with their fellows, despite their overwhelming desire to reach out. I actually really like some of Giacometti's work, I think it's how simplistic the background is figure is but it's not too much or too little.


Egon Schiele 
Egon was one of the leading figures of Austrian Expressionism with his signature graphic style, embrace of figurative distortion and bold defiance of conventional norm of beauty. His work would be characterized by the use of irregular contours, an often somber palette and frequently dark symbolism. Egon had influenced on both expressionist contemporaries, such as, Oskar Kokoschka and also neo-expressionist's such as Francis Bacon, Julian Schnabel and Jean-Michel Basquiate.


Shane Turner
Online I came across an artist called Shane Turner. His art ranges from surrealistic pop art to flowing abstract paintings. Using influences such as comics, graffiti, music, street art, and pop art, Shane creates original modern artworks. Blending figurative realism with surreal elements and composition results in modern paintings. I really like Shane's art and love the way he uses the color to bring the image to life.

LIFE DRAWING

 Life Drawing


Here is the first few life drawing sketch's I have done since February this year. At first it felt a bit foreign and it felt as if I was holding my pencil to tight. I knew I needed to loosen up and get used to it again. The picture furthest to the left is the first sketch I had done this year and it didn't turn out to bad considering I hadn't done life drawing in a while. But there is improvements that I need to make. An improvement I believe that would benefit me would be to practice on measuring the body more carefully but also making sure I'm using my time sufficiently. Why I think practicing measuring would benefit me is sometimes I mess up the proportions of the body and end up with some extremely large legs and a head the size of a pea. The second picture I drew shows why I need to practice on measuring. As you see I have ended up with a pea sized head and a leg which looks like a a chicken drumstick. What's annoying is I think the arm and torso went well and this sketch would of looked great if I had time to correct the mess I made.

For the second half of our lesson we was constantly told to move around our space and not hug our easels. Then to get us working quicker and to move more Jon began to give us less time for each sketch and it ended up him giving us 2 seconds to do a life drawing. I found this task really fun and seeing the outcome of the sketches. Slowly Jon began to bring the time back up and I was still in fast mode and began finishing the sketches before the time was up, the time seemed to drag. After this lesson I defiantly prefer to work quickly, I find my strongest pieces are the ones that I worked quickly on. Once we had done the quick sketches we all got given a stick of willow to attach our pencils too and got told to draw the model. It's pretty hard control a stick to go in the way you want especially when the the stick is curved. I was surprised how well it turned out and I think I might do more sketches using this technique.

The second life drawing lesson we had we started using chalk. I was so happy that I found out we was using chalk, I love using chalk in life drawing even if I'm not the best working with it. To start of with we did three quick sketches. Only one of the sketches tuned out alright which was the middle one, which I didn't get to finish. One thing about having little time is not having time too add character to the drawings. After this Jon came to our easels one by one to explain contour lines and shown us how to do it. Luckily I understood what he meant, but whether or not I could do it was a different matter. When I started using contour lines I started turning it into the outline of the body other than using the light and dark parts of the model. Also with the chalk being think I found it hard to do the lines think and I ended up smudging the lines to try sort them out, when in the end it made it look worse. After finishing our sketches we looked around each other's work to reflect on our own work. I found I was the only one who used the lines differently to everyone else.


When I got back to my easel I thought I would give a go at trying out what the others were doing. But yet again I started using the contour lines as a outline of the body and not using the light. I really messed up with this sketch and wasn't at all pleased. Because my work wasn't going great I started to get frustrated and then began taking the piss with my work and on the next drawing we did I just scribbled the light what I could see on the models body onto my paper and it actually turned out better than the other sketches I did even though I was annoyed and taking my anger out on the paper by scribbling. I didn't think me scribbling the light would turn into a piece of work I actually like. After this Jon then told us to scribble the light and I went a little more crazy with it. If your close to the picture you can  hardly tell what it is, but standing back makes it more clearer.

For our last part of the lesson we started finger painting. I was so excited as I love getting my hands messy and using my hands feels more natural to paint with. The picture to the left is the first painting I did using my my hands which surprisingly turned out well (minus the box the model was sat on). I also used chalk in this painting to show the shadows on the model. The image to the right is the second painting I did. I decided to add a lot more paint and include more of the background into the painting. The feet of the model blends into the background, if I had more time on this painting I would of let the paint dry a bit and use black chalk to do the shadows on the feet to make them more noticeable. Also I would of used chalk to pull the the rest of the picture together.



Here is the final painting I did in this lesson. We had 5 minutes to do our last painting and could use the materials we wanted to. I decided to stick with chalk and paint. I actually thought this painting went really well to say we only had 5 minutes to do it. I wish I had maybe another 5 minutes so I could add more of the background in the painting but not over powering it so the model would stand out.




So this week at college I got introduced to digital life drawing. I never once thought about using a digital drawing pad for anything so I thought using it for life drawing would be pretty difficult. Here are some of the weaker drawings I had composed. When I look at these images it frustrates me to see how bad they are. I feel as if it's hit and miss when I'm doing life drawing, one minute I can create a strong piece of work and the next minute I have created a disaster.