Reflections on Morandi Project: 30 days daily drawing

Morandi seems to have this very graphic style, where you can see the outlines of his objects which feature sharp contrast.I surprised myself, as I thought i would become bored with the limited still life subject.  It made me think outside the box more, and started to have fun looking at different angles and ways to express the simple shapes.  On reflecting on my daily drawings, I found once I let go and started looking at either shape, tone or linework i created more fluid and organic shapes.  I struggled with the linework in week 4, but feel if I explored it using printmaking I might enjoy it more.Going forward i would like to look at doing drypoint or etchings for more Morandi inspired still lifes.I would also like to look at how Morandi used colour, by studying his watercolour and oil paintings.

Week 4 Reflections 2: A drawing a Day

Started looking at the negative space within the compositions

Week 4 Reflections: A drawing a Day

Started working in pen to capture surface detail with the thickness of line.  Morandi had great patience, with this and I was also my comfort zone on this trying to be more expressive with  mark making rather than blending. Ongoing Goals: continue to look at negative space within the compositions, would like to recreate one of Morandi's watercolour still lifes to introduce colour.  Would also like to explore his linework through drypoint or hard etching.

Week 3 Reflections: A drawing a Day

Have gone back to tonal studies with Morandi and trying to be more expressive with my mark making. Enjoyed working up the density with an eraser and trying to be more descriptive with composition.Goals for week 4: continue to look at different perspectives use the eraser more and look at negative space within the compositions.

Week 2 Reflections: A drawing a Day

Second week of morandi studies, have started hinting at backgrounds within my still lifes and explored shadows to create interesting negative space.  Goals for week 3: continue to look at different perspectives with my still life and compositions while working at both A4 and A5 scale.

Week 2 Reflections: A drawing a Day

Second week of morandi studies, have started to look at 2 or 3 objects in my still life drawings. I'm inspired by morandi's use of form using incomplete lines to describe depth and shape.  I can start to see interesting shapes formed with spaces not filled in and be more abstract with my compositions.  Goals for week 3: continue to explore mark making and this abstraction where the objects are reduced to shapes. As Morandi is drawing not to record accurate dimensions, he's playfully exploring the descriptive relationship to reality and what are perceptions of real are.

Research Point: Morandi

Week 1 Reflections 2: A drawing a Day

This Morandi drawing (Still Life 1960) inspires me, as tone and line has been used to create an exciting composition.  The mark making does not give the object's form or describe photorealistic  tonal qualities, like you would find in a classical work where it would be applied to create a 3d representation of the object in 2D. Morandi is playing with the same angular stroke to create interesting designs.  With the incomplete lines suggesting at negative merging with the object's space.  This is a flat 2D interpretation.In response to this, I have started to look at a smaller scale, and what to not draw in relation to negative and positive space.  My style is usually quite fast with a continuous  line to describe, before going in with tone.  This has been challenging to do, by not doing a continuous outline of the warthog.  I compromised, by doing very faint lines and dots in some areas.  I did enjoy only filling in some of the background.  Goals for week 2: look at different perspectives of the still life (e.g. high, low), continue not doing full outlines and look at how to communicate background though mark making.

Week 1 Reflections: A drawing a Day

First morandi studies, looking at his drawings have revealed that his Still Life's contain common everyday objects such as bottles and bowls.  He plays on negative and positive space, reducing the objects to interesting shapes using strong lighting to create his compositions.

Having started to look at just bits of my still life object enlarged, I can start to see interesting shapes formed with negative spaces.

Goals for week 2: use more than one object in my still life setup and explore scale and mark making more.

Research Point: What are the Differences and Similarities between these 3 mediums:

Write a list of similarities and differences between the acts of drawing (or painting) and photography. Think about how they are used to make images and what can happen during that making process. 

Assignment 1

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