[Richard Martin]

Thanks so much to Iliya and everyone at NMA for this course. I’ve enjoyed it a lot so far and I’m really looking forward to the rest of it. It’s daunting, challenging, but accessible to a beginner like me with no prior training in art. The perfect balance.

While working on this assignment a few challenges wrestled in my mind which might be interesting to share.

One of them was being torn between “accuracy” and “desire”. There were inaccuracies in my drawing which I noticed, but then realised that I actually quite liked — the ear being slightly narrower, for example. I was then torn between correcting it or not. Presumably the answer depends on the intention of the work: if the intention is to express oneself artistically then go with what one thinks is best, if the intention is to perfect or improve ones techniques, then go for accuracy.

Another was that while doing the shadows I had started to really like how the illuminated forehead disappeared into the light of the background creating the implied shape of the front rectangular planes rather than them being delineated explicitly. Then Iliya started doing that background to create the very contrast that I had been enjoying the lack of. I really like the background that Iliya created and wanted to experiment with that technique, but couldn’t bring myself to let go of that “implied” forehead plane.

Unfortunately, I used my sketchbook rather than stretched paper. Partly because I was too impatient to wait for the supplies to be delivered, but perhaps also because I felt such an elaborate preparation would be wasted my effort. I think next time I’ll make the effort!

Any feedback on my attempt, especially things I should look to improve on in future works would, of course, be most welcome.

 

Thanks again,

Rich

 

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