Playful Portraits in Charcoal

What Does The Author Mean By..?

1. Making Notes

2. Pushing

3. Modelling

4. Photo Copy Mode

5. Describing

6. Not Symbols

1. Marking the top of the head bottom of the chin middle the eyes, dividing the rest of the space in half for the bottom of the nose and the rest in half for the middle of the mouth

2. Starting out lightly to gradually build up value pushing for shadows and highlight not for details

3. Taking a needed eraser to add highlights throughout the piece

4. Thinking like a photo copy machine, everything is in black and white

5. Accurately mapping out the value, describing the form without details

6. Important to not think about specific features like eyes, nose, mouth, think about shape maps

Charcoal

As we begin our new unit, Conte and Charcoal I have learned that they are both very messy tools to use. Charcoal is a stick of black carbon material used for drawing. Artists generally utilize charcoal in two forms

      1. Vine charcoal is created by burning sticks of wood (usually willow or linden/Tilia) into soft, medium, and hard consistencies

2. Compressed charcoal is charcoal powder mixed with gum binder compressed into round or square sticks. Compressed charcoal is used in drawing pencils

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• Used in such drawings as this to create value and affect to draw more detail into the piece of artwork

It gives more affect of value because you blend and control how much is applied to each project 

Famous charcoal artists are:

1. Kate Sammons

2. David Jon Kassan

3. Justin Balliet

4. Steve Mihal

5. Henry Yan

Kate Sammons             David Jon Kassan          Justin Balliet

Egon Schiele

Egon Schiele

He died at only 28, but in his time created some of the most famous paintings of all times. He showed great deals of  expression through his artwork. He had an obsession with "obscure" and "obscene" (male figures masturbating, nude female bodies in explicit postures) which some people might be disturbed or offended by. His work fulfilled many of the elements in art including line, with thin sketched lines outlining the majority of the work to keep the negative and positive spaced defined combing the two elements. He used contrasting colours that are close on the colour wheel to keep a more neutral aspect. The texture he created was by the way he painted and the dark to light colours he chose. The dark face shows inner anger and feelings he was expressing. Value was shown similarly to how texture was, the way he applied to paint affects the way it was presented to the public. Space has a huge role I personally think in this work of art because he wants the negative space of the background to have an appeal to the boy in this drawing, space changes the perspective of the painting. 

Leonardo da Vinci

 Leonardo da Vinci

This painting is supposedly a replication of what he'll look like in his future years. He is said to be the most legendary artist of all times. He was not only a painter but a sculpture, architect and scientific and investigator. He had many myth's, legends and rumors about his possible homosexuality. Leonardo's painting relates to line as he draws with individual strokes for each strand of his beard. He uses this element to create a different aspect. Shape intertwines with his paintings in the way that he is very particular on how he defines his personal appearance. Texture is formed by the singular drawn hairs and wrinkles upon his face. He implied this element to his art work with great detail. This artwork shows value with the different shades and amount of pressure placed in different areas of the portrait. In the areas he feels he would have more hair than others shows, including below his lower lip. His eyes are shadowed by his thick eyebrows giving a dark vibe.The majority of the canvas is covered so the painting has little negative space but with minimal colour it contributes to the negativity. 

Michelangelo

Michelangelo De Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engenieer, who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art. He is considered the greatest living artist in his lieftime, and is still held to be. He was very prodigious; when the sheer volume of correspondence, sketches and reminiscences he was known for. He was the best artist of the 16th century

He work mostly consisted of
1. Dim colours
2. Lots of positive space
3.Representations of Adam
4. Slight detail begins to appear in sculptures
5. Expressed the full breath of the human condition

Representation of Adam

Gothic Cathedrals

Gothic Cathedrals

A cathedral is a building containing the seat of a bishop

Gothic is a style of art/architecture developed during medieval times in France, it is the time period that the cathedrals were so popular

The Gothic Cathedrals usually consisted of 

1. Massive Structures

2. Slit Windows

3. Semicircular Arches

4. Thin Walls

5. Pined for More Light in the Interior

6. Stained Glass Windows

7. Pointed Arches

8. Rosetta Windows

Many of these buildings took 10-50 years to complete and during the process collapsed leaving the architect to restart. The costs were astronomical and great deal of effort were needed to be put in, in order to have the the appreciation that they deserved. These cathedrals were massive mostly made of glass and arches to create the masterpiece the imagined.

Blind Contour Drawing

Right now in Grade 10 Art we are starting the introduction to portraiture, beginning with blind contour drawings. Blind contour drawing is a method used widely by art teachers, where an artist draws the contour of a subject without looking at the paper. This technique was introduced by Kimon Nicolaides and further popularized by Betty Edwards.The student fixes their eyes on the outline of the model or object, then tracks the edge of the object with his or her eyes, while simultaneously drawing the contour very slowly, in a steady, continuous lien without lifting the pencil or looking at the paper.It was said by many that this technique improves students drawings because it causes students to use both senses of sight and touch and that blind contours creates a shift from left mode to right mode thinking. 

This is an example of a blind contour drawing because it is clear that the artist did not lift his pen/pencil off the page in order to create this. He/she looked for the edges and details of the hand and paid a great deal of attention to it therefore the image in accurate. 

Although some may think that this is an example of a blind contour drawing it is not. This is because the lines drawn are very sketchy and the proportions are too accurate and perfected. In order to create this image the artist would have to be looking at his page occasionally.