I have read an article which was sent to me in the O.C.A. Bulletin which, thought directed at music students, as far as I could tell, was very helpful and relevant to me.
This was at this address: http://www.weareoca.com/education/new-year-is-so-full-of-promises/
This encouraged me to use my learning log for anything I felt inclined to put into it.
“They are for your thoughts, feelings, items that you want to keep. They are your mind map for brain storming ideas and thoughts. Put anything you want in them. Pictures, no matter how obtuse, articles, poems, scraps, ideas, thoughts, found items. Anything really does go, and if it won’t fit in, photograph it and put that in instead.”
But I think that putting my check and log work in with my rambling thoughts might be confusing. So I am going to put my Check and Log reflections with the coursework it relates to. This page will be for “thoughts, feelings and items” I want to keep, and everything else that is not really on the syllabus.
I have also looked at the “learning log sampler” provided by the oca and realised that this portion of my log should be entitled: Research and reflection.
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I’ve been making some drawings each day, on different types of paper like the paper from a textbook I found, then painted white. Here are some of them:
They are also on my Other drawings page. Click here for all my other drawings.
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10th February
Here is an artist I came across on the internet, whose drawing style I find interesting. His name is Stefanos Rokos; I like the way he combines drawings from life with drawings from fantasy.
He often fills the picture plane, making very busy images without negative spaces.
I like the way he uses the spaces in the drawings – white spaces have smudges and marks in them so they are not blank; areas of colour have dots and blots of ink. I like how the above drawing has one face painted over – it reminds me of the process of drawing, and what happens when something goes wrong; it is also unnerving. Two of the faces have been obscured in that drawing.
In fact, Rokos frequently obscures or simply does not draw facial features.
The drawing above is one of my favourites by Stefanos Rokos. I like the quality of line used to draw the man and his surroundings. I like the watery marks and washes. In the window behind the figure in this drawing Rokos has used news paper or magazine text which seems to have been painted over with white and then watery blue.
Stefanos Rokos’s drawings are really fascinating because they have so many layers and intricacies. They have inconsistencies and attention to detail. I think they are brilliant.
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Here is a drawing in which I am exploring the idea of drawing the background, or the objects around a still life to give an image context.
In this drawing the still life is the collection of objects on the table.
This was a useful drawing for developing my thoughts and knowledge about still life.
This is a drawing using a paintbrush, one of my notes from my previous assessment was to use chunkier mediums so I am practising here.
The other drawing is a dip pen portrait which went awry. Dip pens bring an unpredictability to a drawing.
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My tutor has suggested that I look “at the figures of Stanley Spencer” and “the quality of line in an Egon Schiele drawing” because they “both have their roots in observed figurative subject matter” but “there is not the realistic translation of a David Hockney portrait, or the gritty realism of Lucian Freud” I think this will be very helpful. I am going to make pages for them.
I also still need to look into the art of Frank Auerbach, Alberto Giacometti and Henry Moore. I will make pages for them also.