Reflection Essay

Before this year, I underestimated the importance of careful observation. I hadn’t realized before how much distortion occurred between me observing the reference, and my drawing of that reference. Our first guest artist Tommy, who taught the lessons on gesture and figure drawings, taught me to illustrate the inherent motion and liveliness of a pose. By capturing the line of action in a pose, I found myself being better able to capture the life in a gesture, making my drawings feel more expressive and less stiff. These brief lessons in figure drawing also taught me the importance of analyzing the negative space around the figure, lending to more accurate approximations of the volumes of the forms that make up the body. Finally, the loose sketching style exhibited by Tommy helped in my understanding of capturing the proportions of a figure gradually more precise estimates. Starting with large loose shapes and lines, Tommy gradually drew in details and more precise contours, bringing the form into existence through a series of loose but thoughtful marks. When implementing this process I found myself being better at capturing the proportions and forms of the human figure, and in a quicker time than it would take to systematically sketch each individual limb and relate them to one another. Through the process of copying the mark of artist Käthe Kollwitz, I learned to train my eyes to pay attention to the way she made marks in her etchings, and why she placed the marks where she did. Though her scratchy, frenetic etching style lends to an organic and emotive feel, the placement and contour of the lines to the forms in her etchings and drawings is evidently ordered and intentional. Ending our year with our painting exploration, I found that in oil painting I renewed my appreciation for painting in general. Before painting with oil, I found painting as a whole to be incredibly messy, time consuming, and all for little benefit for myself. After completing the oil painting, I found the medium to be incredibly rewarding. The oil painting itself was a culmination of my observation skills; I had to use my understanding of negative space to correctly orient the objects of the still life in a manner that remained faithful to the reference, and my understanding of lighting and value played a crucial role in bringing form and depth to the painting overall. Being mindful to work carefully and gently wash the painting with thin glazes as opposed to heaping globs on the canvas taught me patience in the process, and granted me more time to observe the subtle differences in how shadows cast upon each other in the still life. Finally, with our brief foray into abstraction, I was able to let loose from my observation of the natural world and instead invest my attention into the crucial role of color in an abstract piece. The interactions between the colors, and the concept of simultaneous contrast were either new or foreign to me prior to our exploration of abstraction. I learned to care less about the nature of my mark, and to instead pay attention to how that mark interacted with the entirety of the painting, and the color and texture of the mark’s role in that interaction.

I belief my skills in observation have seen the greatest growth this year. Like anyone else, I can tell when something isn’t faithful to the reference, but the growth I’ve experienced in my observational skills has lent me the ability to better correct what I know isn’t right. Before, I’d endlessly toil away through trial and error, making the mark and erasing it in a repetitive cycle, but now, I consider the following: the negative space, the relative proportion in comparison to other forms, and the faithfulness to the orientation of the form (whether I may have misplaced the angle between the arm and the torso, the angle between the knee-pivot and the rest of the leg, among others). Beyond being able to capture the likeness of objects better than before, the growth in my observational skills has also lent itself to better attention to the relative values of shadows and highlights in my drawings and specifically my oil painting (comparing the darkest darks to each other, the lightest lights, etc.).

I think I could use most improvement in my variety of medium. I’m still fairly averse to any 3D medium, despite my liking for sculptures, and I could most definitely improve on everything I said above. Though I’ve found marked improvement in my observational skills and my mark-making abilities, they are still quite novice and I’d like to get better at drawing and capturing the likeness of faces other than my own. I’ve found that I can quite easily capture what looks to be myself, but drawing someone else and capturing that same likeness poses an incredible challenge. Though I’ve seen growth in my observational skills, they still falter when trying to capture complex poses (often featuring fore-shortening) and faces. I struggled a little bit with the conceptualization and planning of many pieces throughout the year, though I can acknowledge that prior occupations with other classes may have been interfering with my ability to think of anything other than my Physics test on Tuesday. I observe pieces in the hallway and admire the originality in subject matter, and similarly I’d like to approach more complex and personal subject matter.