Driving home through heavy fog last night. Trying to capture the glow of sodium streetlights on the road.
Streetlights on a foggy autumn night, 30 March 2014.
Looking out my kitchen window I could see a light in the next street and my neighbours trees silhouetted against the light.
Light in the next street, trees and powerline, 30 March 2014.
I have a season pass to the Gold and the Incas exhibition, at the National Gallery of Australia. I like being able to spend time having a good look at one or two individual works in detail. I do this by drawing them. However drawing is proving very challenging in the low-light conditions in the exhibition. For a lot of the time while I was making these drawings I couldn’t actually see the tip of my pencil on the page.
This visit I drew two ‘stirrup’ vases, (they get their name from the shape of the handle), although this is clearly not what their makers, the Moche people called them* because stirrups were not introduced into South America until the Spanish invasion, some 800 years after these pots had been made. Both of these works come from the Museo Larco, in Lima, Peru. Some highlights of the Museum ‘s collection are also accessible through the Google Art Project, which is both in English and Spanish.
Most striking in the vases on display are the portrait vases, where faces are deftly sculpted in the round and painted in strong colours.
Moche vase, portrait head, 100-800 AD, ceramic, from the collection of the Museo Larco, Lima, Peru ML000267.
I also made a second drawing of another Moche pot in the shape of four pepinos. The symbolism of the four melons is believed to be related to the four cardinal directions.
Moche culture, vase in the form of Pepinos, ceramic, from the collection of the Museo Larco, Lima, Peru ML006659.
I particularly enjoy the colours used on these pots so once I got home I scanned and printed out the pictures I had drawn and then I indulged myself with a bit of good old-fashioned colouring in.
Moche pot with pepinos, 24 March 2014 watercolour.
The coloured stripes on the face in the next image are not shadows. The face actually has two colours, umber on one side and a burnt sienna on the other, painted over the glazed terracotta and provide evidence of painted facial decoration.
Moche portrait pot, 24 March 2014, watercolour.
*Actually the Moche pots are referred to as pacchas in the exhibition catalogue. These are ritual objects, also made in materials other than ceramics, which generally consist of a form that conducts or conduits liquid through them. These vessels were used in life and were also buried with the dead. Their symbolism is related to the connection between the exterior and interior ‘worlds’ that meet during rituals and at the moment of death.
Recently I was given a Moleskine Sketchbook, nice gift. I have used their watercolour books before, I lashed out and bought some when I did an overseas trip, but the sketchbook was new to me. Time to put it through it’s paces. I decided to use my fountain pen with black ink and then try some watercolour washes.
OK, I was rather surprised to see my black ink get sucked into the page so that there was only a medium grey colour left behind. Not promising. Then the watercolour wash ‘beaded’, very finely, on the paper with as much paper exposed as covered. My ink isn’t permanent so there was quite a bit of ‘running’. I wasn’t too happy. But then I looked at the page as it dried and decided it wasn’t so bad after all – I’m referring to the top half of the image below. I quite like the way the watercolour and ink has worked on the red backpack.
Ink and watercolour on Moleskine sketchbook.
I then tried reversing my approach, laying down some washes and a bit of watercolour sketching. The teapot on the left was far more subtle than I expected. I discovered that I could draw back into the wash, after it had dried a bit and the ink remained a lot darker. As you can see the ink didn’t bleed even though the paper remained somewhat damp.
I’ve also done more drawings on the back of this page using washes and I’m really pleased to see that there is no bleeding from one side to the other. I did leave the page to dry out a bit between drawings. The washes dried reasonably quickly, enough for me to be convinced I could get a rapid sketch with washes done and still have it dry enough to close the book up after only a few minutes drying time.
The main drawback for me to effectively use this journal remains the ink. Given that I like to make notes to go with my sketches using this fountain pen with the current type of ink clearly isn’t going to be too successful. Particularly if I want my notes to remain visible. I did see that Moleskine has a rollerball pen that can be clipped for easy carriage onto the sketchbook, but at just under $20 for the pen and $5 each for the refills I think I’ll pass on the “innovative rectangular design” that is “fashioned to specifically compliment the shape and personality of a Moleskine journal”, for a more rudimentary ball point pen!
If I’ve learned one thing since joining the world of on-line drawing, urban sketchers and other sundry artists, is that there are many different techniques out there to apply to any scene or subject matter. I haven’t been doing many watercolours recently, so I’ve decided it is time to do some more exploration.
Watercolour over wax crayon.
I dropped by my local library the other day and selected two watercolour books from what was on offer. I was looking for something to suggest some new techniques or find some different ways of working. One of the books I picked up was Shirley Trevena’s Taking Risks With Watercolour. While I’m not particularly interested in step by step painting guide, Trevena’s book takes you through both her techniques and her thinking behind the preparation of one particular work. Her strong colours, use of layering and interesting compositions were enough to get my interest. The other book, Travels with Watercolour by Lucy Willis, I have yet to get fully into, but almost immediately I found some ideas that I could readily apply.
So today was the day. What I was focusing on was masking and wax crayons to help indicate layers and complex shapes. My subject matter was a green plastic sieve with some figs inside it. Willis had suggested using a wax crayon to draw a complex shape which colour could be washed over, rather than the more common way of painting in the negative shapes and leaving the white of the paper to indicate the shape. Trevena uses masking fluid, among many other techniques, to reserve space and allow for complex pattern detail to be worked into a painting. She suggests using the fluid with a fine nozzled bottle to allow for more linear definition (obviously the nozzle on my bottle wasn’t quite what it could have been).
Early stages of resists on watercolour paper.
The photo above shows the first stage of both techniques. The top is the wax resist and the bottom is the masking fluid. I then applied some washes over them, keeping in mind how the light was falling on the bowl but not necessarily taking into account the actual colour behind the bowl.
Wax and masking fluid resist with added washes.
Having removed the masking fluid on the bottom image I then went back in with some watercolour pencil to add extra colour. Some other suggestions from Trevena, were to use a stick to drag colour from one area to suggest detail, in this case the purple colour of the base of the fig into the lighter green of the upper part of the fruit.
Drawing colour up from wet paint with a stick and a pleasing passage of wash over wax crayon.
I’m pretty pleased with these initial explorations and plan to keep working with these ideas and several others suggested by both artists.
Two drawings involving the idea of flight. The first is a sculpture at the intersection of Summerland Circuit & Drakeford Drive in Kambah. It’s bright orange colour has been the focus of quite a bit of discussion.
Moth Ascending the Capital, Alexander Knox, painted steel 2012.
The second was drawn in the nearby adventure playground, where I had the challenge of capturing people riding the ‘Flying Fox’.
Riding the ‘Flying Fox’, 19 January 2014.
leonieandrews 