Demonstration of technical and visual skills – materials, observational skills, visual awareness and compositional skills (35%).
In part five, has so far given me a new way at discovering new skills with the use of my own chosen mediums that allow me to open up to new visual skills and technical skills. I have notice that my compositional skills have started improving from part one towards part five, which this has made me more comfortable in my final assignment five. My visual and observational skills have been the mostly focused on in the assignment five final drawing. I made more improvements in what I been depicting by the creation use of my own visual skills. The observational skills were developed by looking at the sense of emotions that I have captured in my final drawing.
In my final drawing, I focused on improving these skills by experimenting with mixed medias and doing rough sketches, but I need to look out into developing a connection with other materials that I haven’t used before.
Quality of outcome – content, application of knowledge, presentation of work in a coherent manner, discernment, conceptualisation of thoughts, communication of ideas (20%).
When I look back at my final drawing that I have created, I see a very strong communication ideas at how I captured the emotional feelings with the application of the knowledge in the use of different materials and tones. The quality outcome in the final drawing has influenced me to create a coherent manner and discernment at connecting with my story and ideas that I visualized in my final drawing .
I have given my final drawing a connection with realism and presenting it with expressive mark-makings by using strong understanding in mixed medias. I wanted to share more ideas with my final drawing, but I had to take risky choices in not overworking my final drawing too much. So I am very happy in the finished results in the final drawing.
Demonstration of creativity – imagination, experimentation, invention, development of a personal voice (25%).
In the assignment five, I have shared my imagination of understanding the emotions and feelings that have given me a personal voice in a context story way. There were experimentations and inventions that I tried in my sketch book with the use of different mediums. My imagination was to share a personal event that happened in the past, a voice that I’m not afraid to talk about my mental health issues by giving it in an expressive style and tones within my artwork piece. The creativity in my final drawing is the best part I have captured so far.
Context reflection – research, and critical thinking (learning logs and, at second and third level, critical reviews and essays) (20%).
I used the research ideas from the previous parts to create my final artwork. I find my way of presenting my story and emotions in a context way as a strong reflection on who I am and my personal life. I did indeed do some critical thinking as I was going along in my final drawing by looking at the drawing and telling myself what needed to be adjusted, added or fixed. I also shared my critical ideas in the context with my past life mental health issues by telling viewers what so important about my final art piece.
I intend to keep my essays clear and more understanding for others to read, also I kept my learning log as a proof of what was all it about and it’s progress from beginning to the end.
Title: Reflecting the Self Expression with the connections to tones and used of mixed media.
Finding the knowledge of understanding the expression in tones, colours and emotions is always a chasing adventure to discovery. A subject that always stands out to me is how I understand myself and how I express this in my works to create a story for others. There is always a tackle to solve in the emotions of the marks that strive towards the edge of changing the image into a different emotion. This course has given me an opportunity to improve my passion of art, on building my freedom towards the drawing techniques and reflections on what I love to achieve in the progress.
Looking at the expressive emotions and use of tones in Gustave Courbet’s portraits have a strong personal connections with me, he always had the story for viewers to ask questions to themselves such as “Why he has a mischief look on his face?” or “Why she looks so boredom?”. I have aimed my connection with his tones and realism mark-makings that inspired me to use in my assignment five, it’s the tones and colours that tell a feeling or story.
Looking into the previous parts of Drawing One Module is a very challenging moment for me to tackle like a football match, there’s always a struggle that come across in such mark-makings that don’t want to work with that colour or the subject. But learning to accept those issues can reflect an self expression in many ways, where I look at my colours are bright when I’m happy, or when I’m feeling down, then the colours are looking so dull with sick messy tones.
It’s important for me to learn to depict in my artworks with the use of art words such as ‘expressive’, ‘movement’, ‘style’ or ‘elements’, because they find a way to introduced themselves with mixed of medias that create self expression.
In my assignment five final drawing, called “Freedom from Depression”, I gave it another meaning to describe it as self expression. The mark-makings show a realism style as a movement style similar to Gustave Courbet’s drawings, also I created a theme for the background with the use of dark tones along with messy and expressive marks to show the feelings of what I was going through in life. There is a strong sense of emotions in the figure of myself with the use of ink colours that shows light, joyful and freedom, that I have removed myself from the past mental health issues. I positioned myself looking towards light as a new step to future and not looking back to the dark shadowed past. My chosen medias are mediums that I enjoy using and makes me comfortable to give the drawing an expressive emotional feeling. All these technical skills, visual knowledge and materials have created a story for my self expression final drawing.
For this assignment, I want this subject to be based on my past mental health issues, also in other words I suffer from depression, which at one stage affected my studies and causing me to not finish my first year with the OCA on time, but I’m thankful to receive an extension to complete my first year in Drawing One course.
This all started halfway in my first year studies, after my family and friends realized my mental health with depression was getting dangerous, they feared I would try to commit suicide again, so their help reached out to me in time and got me to refresh a new start with the desperate help from my psychologist Toni who I’ve been going for years, from there on, serious concerns over my medication dosage started pouring in, which had been found out that I’ve been on the wrong medication dosage size and medicine for years, which doctors had to put me into a chaos state to restart fresh with new medication, this process took me a long time to develop my connection with the new medications.
Now to the present day, I have recovered from my mental health issues, I feel a wonderful spirit, which is called “Freedom”. I have never felt freedom from my sufferings in a long time, which I feel it’s real, the heavyweight has come off my chest and made me feel good to start these studies again, which I’m so grateful.
So this final assignment drawing will be based on the freedom from my past life sufferings, so I hope that those who going through similar mental health issues will understand the background story, to be honest from my heart, to say in my own words “It’s not that easy to escape from depression or other mental health issues, it’s like a disease that spreads throughout your body that controls your emotions in a painful state”, for those I tell you to be strong and think about how much you are loved by those that are there for you, I’m also here for you.
Sketch Book
For the beginning stage of my final assignment, I did some rough sketches and experiments with mixed medias, I also kept the log book up to date throughout my assignment five.
First I did the experiments with mixed medias, firstly in the A3 sketchbook to find the best media for the final drawing. I used different inks, pencils, household products, paints and other resources I could find. This was fun to do, but I never used these techniques in my final assignment later on as there wasn’t a strong connection with my emotions in looking at these techniques. The experiment studies were bold, bright and abstract, so I left them out the way and focused on using some of the materials like inks, conte crayons and graphite pencils.
Here below you can see the experiments in the A3 sketchbook from pages eleven to fourteen, labeled as Fig. 1 to Fig. 4.
Fig.1 Experiments with Mixed Media – A3 Sketchbook, Page 11
Fig. 2 Experiments with Mixed Media – A3 Sketchbook, Page 12
Fig.3 Experiments with Mixed Media – A3 Sketchbook, Page 13
Fig.4 Experiments with Mixed Media – A3 Sketchbook, Page 14
Then after doing the experiments with mixed medias in my A3 sketchbook, I went to do some rough sketches in the A4 and A3 sketch book.
The first rough sketch was done on a separate single paper that I could use watercolour paint on, I later pasted it in the A4 sketchbook, this drawing was based on light and bright colours and myself in a floating motion away from the darker tones, but I found the idea was too much of me in a fun way, than the emotions of what I wanted to capture. The emotional feelings I was looking for is what it feels like being depressed and combining with what it feels like being freed from that depression feeling in one plot.
Here below in Fig. 5, you can see the rough sketches on a single paper on page fifty in the A4 sketchbook.
Also I did a larger sketch in the A3 sketchbook of the similar pose to the Fig. 5 sketches, you can see the rough graphite pencil sketch in Fig. 6 on page fifteen, below.
I figured out a way of doing the next rough sketches by thinking back to the expressive mark-makings I did in Drawing One: Part One, Project One – Exercise 1: Experimenting with Expressive Lines and Marks. So the idea is to use dark tonal expressive marks that describes depression, frustration and confusion feeling in the background. Then for my figure in a realism style to give it a true emotional feeling with the soften mark-makings and along with colourful inks that represents freedom and joyful feelings.
Here below you can see the rough sketches in the A4 Sketchbook as Fig. 7 – Page forty-nine and A3 Sketchbook as Fig. 8 – Page sixteen below.
I found the idea in Fig. 7 and Fig. 8 wonderful, it has all the aspects I wanted for my final drawing, especially the way I look towards light is expressive along with the background marks that represents the background story of my past sufferings. I used this idea in the final assignment drawing.
Final Assignment Five – Drawing progress
In the beginning of the final drawing, I started with an outline graphite pencil on white Fabriano Accademia Paper, 200gsm and the size is 54.5cm x 70cm. Starting with HB graphite pencil to get the proportions and figure well balanced is important for me as it’s the main subject. I used natural light for this drawing of myself, because I stood near my art studio window sketching my figure by looking at a mirror, but for the face, I used a photo reference to copy from. You can see the outline drawing progress in Fig. 9, below.
Fig. 9 Beginning Progress of Final Drawing – HB Graphite Pencil on Fabriano Accademia White Paper, 54.5cm x 70cm.
Next I started with the cross-hatching and hatching marks by using an HB, 2B and 4B graphite pencils. This can be seen below of the progress from the beginning until the end of the mark-makings with the graphite pencils.
Beginning mark-makings progress seen in Fig. 10 and the close-up in Fig. 11, below.
Fig. 10 Beginning Mark-Makings Progress of Final Drawing – HB, 2B and 4B Graphite Pencil on Fabriano Accademia White Paper, 54.5cm x 70cm
Fig. 11 Beginning Mark-Makings Progress of Final Drawing: Close-Up – HB, 2B and 4B Graphite Pencil on Fabriano Accademia White Paper, 54.5cm x 70cm
Here is the finished progress results of the mark-makings with the graphite pencils in Fig. 12, below.
Fig. 12 Finished Mark-Makings Progress of Final Drawing – HB, 2B and 4B Graphite Pencil on Fabriano Accademia White Paper, 54.5cm x 70cm
Next was using mixed mediums such as using the Conte Black Sketching Crayons for giving that rough effect marks in the background and the Acrylic Drawing Inks for the black heavy scribbles surround my head in the background, also I used light colourful inks on my figure where freedom light is shining on me. But before I started the inks, I did a quick test on a printed image of the Fig. 12 drawing, to see which mark-makings style would be great for the background, this was done in the A4 sketchbook on page 51. You can see it in Fig. 13, below.
Fig. 13 Test on Printed of the Fig. 12 Sketch – Conte Black Sketching Crayon, A4 Sketchbook, Page 51.
After doing the test, I liked the Frame 1 on the far left in Fig. 13. So I started doing the progress on the final drawing. Now you can see the half-way progress in Fig. 14, below.
Fig. 14 Half-Way Progress of Final Drawing – Mixed Media on Fabriano Accademia White Paper, 54.5cm x 70cm
Then I finished off my final drawing with the darker inks on the darker shadows on the figure. Which at this stage I felt that I was done with everything in the final drawing and I loved the results of it. There is a lot of emotions and connections in it, the background gives a feeling of depressive, heavyweight, confusion and emotional, but then my figure full of colourful light shows me in a happy freedom way. I gave this final drawing a title: “Freedom from Depression“.
You can see the final Assignment Five drawing in Fig. 15, below.
Fig. 15 Finished Progress of Final Drawing “Freedom from Depression” – Mixed Media on Fabriano Accademia White Paper, 54.5cm x 70cm
Here is close-ups of the final drawing in Fig. 15 “Finished Progress of Final Drawing – Mixed Media on Fabriano Accademia White Paper, 54.5cm x 70cm“. Seen them below in Fig. 16; Fig. 17 and Fig. 18.
Fig. 16 Final Drawing Close-Up of Face – Mixed Media on Fabriano Accademia White Paper, 54.5cm x 70cm
Fig. 17 Final Drawing Close-Up of Background Marks – Mixed Media on Fabriano Accademia White Paper, 54.5cm x 70cm
Fig. 18 Final Drawing Close-Up of Figure Marks – Mixed Media on Fabriano Accademia White Paper, 54.5cm x 70cm
I loved this assignment so far, it’s nice to share my ideas, choosing own mediums and telling a story about myself and my struggling past, this was a project where I gave myself a true meaning of who I am and what I shouldn’t be afraid of telling my emotional feeling, but it was a great feeling to explain the impact of what I was going through by showing it in a drawing that shows two worlds I was in, a world where it was depressing and was fighting at same time to find my freedom, which I would find it after so many years. I hope you enjoy this project.
Tristan's OCA Fine Art Studies Blog 