[Jack]

Day 17 (03/11/21)

• Watched a section of Russian Approach to Light and Shadow on drawing prisms.
• Drew some cubes and prisms, filled a sheet or two.

 

Practice Time: 1h

[Jack]

Day 16 (02/11/21)

Another quiet day practice-wise. I have felt unproductive since Saturday with a few stresses at work draining my energy. I’m trying to remember that doing something is better than nothing; that the learning process isn’t linear.

• I watched Russian Approach to Light and Shadow, I’m enjoying the course though I’m not sure I’ll stick with it for all ~100 hours!
• I practised by filling a few A3 pages of cubes in perspective + shadow. It’s really quite relaxing, but I need to get back to landscapes!

Practice Time: 1.5h

[Jack]

Day 15 (01/11/21) (The real 1st Nov, the last post should have been 31!)

Very little time to practice today…

• I watched how to draw geometric forms from Russian Drawing.
• I practised drawing simple shapes; boxes, cylinders, and cones – filling a handful of A3 sheets.
• Number one thing I learned was that ovals and ellipses aren’t the same thing **mind blown**

I’ll probably spend more time over the next few days with some of these fundamental exercises – my hope is that it’ll carry over into better landscapes. How exactly? Not totally sure.

Practice Time: 1.5hrs

[Jack]

Day 14 (1/11/21)

• I watched the third chapter of Huston’s creative compositions on Affinity, Contrast, and Pacing in Landscape Composition.
• I watched how to draw geometric forms from the Russian Drawing course.
• Eh, I tried to work on a landscape sketch – going into it with three specific goals, but it just seemed to go wrong straight away. So after an hour or so I called it quits and wrote it off.  I’m not really sure why it went badly. I have been struggling with thin wispy forms (e.g. branches); big structural masses seem to come more easily than fine detail. Anyway, I  need to reflect on it some more. I might scrape it off and try again.

Not a productive day!

Practice Time: 2h

[Jack]

Very helpful, thanks Julia! I appreciate the feedback immensely, it’s priceless. I’m glad you’re keeping an eye on the thread 🙂 what gives me a bit of confidence is that I’m starting to recognise some of the errors you noted. The floating squash being one of them, ha. The drawing/perspective of the book worsened as I kept reworking it to try and make the plain red-ness of it more harmonious and less garish. I also think the squash floats because the form doesn’t darken in value enough as it turns – but I tried so many times to improve it, only ever making it worse, so I eventually just succumbed to leaving it as it was.

Weirdly, the lack of shadow from the jug and the pinkish handle, was actually how it looked to me. The room was south-facing, but the mirror threw a lot of light back into the jug that just seem to eliminate its shadow and reflect the red into the jug. I was tempted to “fix” it by painting how I thought it should be – I exaggerated the squash/book shadow for instance – but ended up just going with how it looked for the jug. This differing treatment does create a lack of unity.

Thanks again, keep any thoughts coming! 🙂

[Jack]

Day 13 (30/10/21)

• I watched How to Measure From Observation from the Russian Drawing course.
• I read the chapter on painting inside from Landscape Inside and Out 
• I drew some thumbnails, a rough value study, and then mostly painted a still life:

Like last Saturday, I had a lot of fun with this far more ambitious still life. Last week was just a single pear; this  week involved more objects, the transparency of the jug, plus the reflection of the mirror, all on a larger ~A3 size. It was definitely a stretch and a challenge, at one point I thought I had ruinously bit off more than I could chew.  The main idea of the sketch was to create visual interest by having a yellow/green squash atop a red book  – complementary colours – and the various analogous colours the reflective jug/mirror would create. I thought this would carry over into landscapes well.

For me, I like the composition,  the abstract quality of the jug, the mirrored effect, and the thick application of paint. Overall, it sort of reads that someone enjoyed the process of making it – if you don’t look too deeply into any one item, then the overall impression works.  Its main weakness, in my opinion rests with the book/squash. It was a challenge to make a plain red book visually interesting; and I scraped away and retried the squash a couple of times.  They just don’t sitwell together. I also relied on a lot of broken brushwork and near-random mark-making throughout simply because I can’t easily depict the  folds or text of the cloth. It was a cop out of sorts.  I probably could have saved time, and paint, with a more fully realised value sketch.

Practice Time: 3.5 hours

 

[Jack]

Day 12 (29/10/21)

• I watched Huston’s second chapter of Creative Compositions.
• I spent a short amount of time practising mark-making from the Russian Drawing course.
• I painted a small sketch from yesterday’s sketch. The day is getting dark so early now that it’s making photographing these pretty difficult!

 

Practice Time: 2hrs

• This reply was modified 2 years, 6 months ago by Jack.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 6 months ago by Jack.

[Jack]

Day 11 (28/10/21)

• I watched An Introduction to Mark Making of the Russian Drawing course, with the idea of spending more time drawing. I spent about 30 minutes doing the recommended exercises.
• 1.5 hour sketch of a mountain scene, reasonable size (~A3). I struggled with the value relationships and the subtle shifts that make for convincing depth of field.

 

Practice Time: 2hrs

[Jack]

Day 10 (27/10/21)

• I finished the chapter on ‘painting outside’ in Landscape Painting Inside and Out. The chapter mentions a few ‘methods’ for starting a painting:
  • Draw out the scene in pencil/charcoal first
  • Paint expressively with colour first, then focus on drawing
  • Paint the focal point first
  • Try to be as accurate to what you see as possible
  • Start with a sketch, then work on a much larger painting started in the studio.
• I worked on two reasonably large figure drawings (~45 mins) – they were ultimately more time consuming than I intended, but I found the poses tricky and got a bit distracted with the podcasts I was listening to. I think I am going to work on the Russian Drawing Course, my drawing needs a lot of work.

• In terms of landscape, I whipped together another postcard-sized sketch based on a reference image in open critique. I wanted to see if my own advice was useful. Result, not so sure!

• I also worked on a few thumbnails of  coastal and mountain scenes with tricky lighting conditions.

Practice Time:  3hrs

 

 

[Jack]

Day 9 (26/10/21)

• I whipped together a small landscape sketch that I was never really happy with. The reference photo contained traces of the side-lit effect on a stormy day that I exaggerated. I think this fiction shows. I struggled to get any variation into the background hills without it dominating, and I changed the hill shadow numerous times – warm/cool, lighter/darker. It’s something I should have figured out in a value sketch.
• There are parts of the composition I really like, notably where the road ends with a dash of light set against  the dark trees behind – it serves to suck you into the painting.

• There’s no life drawing class this week as it’s half-term break, so I completed a few 30-minute poses instead. Man do I need to practice figure drawing more often. They were good fun, but challenging to get the proportions right. I’m thinking of starting the Russian Academy course to get more drawing time in, hmmm. I quite like the middle one, it’s like she’s dancing.

[Jack]

Hello Meghana,

I’m a bit obsessed with ideas about what makes for productive learning. These are just my opinions. I expect the formula is different for each individual.

So I’m not sure what Carlos had in mind – but I was actually thinking of how one might practice art a bit like how a runner trains. A runner will have ‘training blocks’, with benchmark events leading up to a ‘big race’. A training block will usually contain all the elements of running, but focus on one thing above others. In art, this might mean a training block focused on improving a specific fundamental (say, values, composition, colour, etc) or perhaps exploring a whole new subject-matter (landscapes, portraits) or medium (watercolour). During the training block you test yourself with a piece of work that stretches your abilities -perhaps it’s a weekly an 8 hour long pose to see if you’re learning rendering correctly, or a pochade landscape to see how you’ve absorbed lessons on colour harmony. Then finishing your training block by submitting yourself to a final piece that, like a race,  showcases the improvement achieved.

I’m just thinking aloud here – this isn’t really the regiment I’m following.

Art is a little more complicated than running because there are so many fundamentals, mediums, subject-matter – it’s hard to know what to prioritise. If you’re an art student, you might have time to put aside >60+ hrs a week and routinely practice most of them. If you have other commitments or restrictions, however, then in my opinion you must prioritise according to your goals. The challenge is always having enough specificity in your practice to progress, without specialising or narrowing your learning to the detriment of your long-term goals. Do a bit of everything, and you may develop too slowly to enjoy the process or produce any decent work. Do only one thing, and you’ll inevitably reach the limits of your training.

For me, my main goal right now is to be able to paint a landscape I wouldn’t be ashamed to hang in my house. Most of my daily practice is centred around this aim – I still do figure drawing, still life, portraits, but they take up less of my time. Everyday I try to do some practice related to landscape, and if I have time, I’ll do a bit of work in another area. Every 2-3 days I complete a small landscape work to gauge improvement; every week, I try something bigger/more complicated/more challenging.

I have no idea if this is effective approach. It’s just what I’m doing.

[Jack]

Day 8 (25/10/21)

I didn’t get much time for drawing/painting today.

• I watched the first week of Huston’s Creative Composition.
• I went through my old photos looking for landscape references, composing thumbnail sketches and value plans for a few of them. Then I spent a bit of time on some colour studies, nothing too fancy (harder than I thought it’d be too).

 

Practice Time: 1.5hrs

[Jack]

The figure drawing above immediately caught my eye in the forum thumbnails – it was the effect of the dark background behind the glowing figure that drew my intention. Wonderfully rendered too – I’m envious!

Mind me asking what paper you use? I bought some “fancy” paper to try some charcoal drawings but it tears so easily that it prevents much rework.

[Jack]

Day 7 (24/10/21)

• One week of the challenge completed, nice!
• I read part of chapter 5 ‘painting outside’ of Landscape In and Out. I expect I’ll re-read the chapter as it’s full of great ideas, including a 10 day challenge of different ways to approach outdoor painting and different methods to approach the painting process.
  • Try sprints. Paint the same subject, on the same size canvas, three times. First in an hour, then in 30 minutes, then in 15. The lesson is to learn to paint quickly.
  • Try 10 day challenge (pg 68)
• In terms of practice, I completed a 2.5 hr charcoal drawing of a tree that I sketched earlier in the week. The challenge was drawing big, on an A3 sheet; practising the rendering of the bark; and, capturing the subtle changes in dappled light effects. I treated the subject very similar to figure drawing, which was good fun.

 

Practice Time: 2.5hrs

[Jack]

Cheers Carlos. Admittedly, I’m not drawing as much as I ought to (who is?!), but your comments inspired me to use charcoal today instead of oil.

The 70/30 idea with 6-week blocks dedicated to specific subjects sounds like a good way for a beginner to build a well-rounded set of skills. But in truth, I’m enjoying landscape too much to move on right now. My current plan is to ride this wave of enthusiasm, sticking to landscape whilst also doing a couple sessions a week dedicated to some other subject. So I have a figure drawing class on Tuesdays and yesterday I did a still life, etc.

It may not be ‘optimal’ in terms of learning and progressing, but I think it’s important to prioritise enjoying the process if you’re just a keen hobbiest who isn’t trying to make anything more out of it. Working hard at whatever is fun feels like a productive formula to me 😬

I remember seeing Watt’s lecture a few months ago and I’ve watched it again this evening. It’s very motivating. I challenge anyone to watch it and not want to get to work! Thanks for reminding me of it.

[Author]

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