Friday, August 14, 2020

Remote Class Projects: Week of 3/30

 

Ink wash and pen

You are to make a number of drawings using your twig pen from last week (or a new one) that are mainly about light and shadow, but also experimenting with what the ink can do.  Play with it.  Try not to be governed by “making” the ink do what you want it to but allow the ink to do what it will, all while being reasonably faithful to what you observe.

Last week the emphasis was on control; controlling the value of the various forms of each drawing to reasonably replicate what the light and shadow looks like.  This week you are to push thing a bit further by allowing the ink to have even more control.  Experiment with the pen by dipping your twig pen in not only jet black ink, but dip in into various wash values as well.  You’ll find that dipping it into light or middle gray will mimic a pencil mark.  Starting with light gray gestural marks allows for the measuring exploration necessary for properly proportioned forms, and once that sets you can overpower those early marks with richer darker marks for the more important, established lines.  Filling the various light and dark shapes with the appropriate values will then make those early marks virtually non-existent.  While doing this allow the ink to run and bleed in ways to make the drawing more interesting.  As much as possible, let the medium make the decisions. 

The best ink drawings are a negotiation between the artist and the medium.

The Exercises

You are to make three self portrait drawings from a mirror using only ink wash and your twig pen.  Each should fill a page of your 18x24 paper, and you must include at least your whole head and shoulders, with the figure continuing to the edge of the paper.  Each drawing should take at least an hour and a half, and each should look stylistically different than the others. Somewhere in each drawing should be the jet black of the pure ink, with substantial parts of the drawing left the white of the paper.   If things don’t work out in a drawing, be willing to start over!

Good luck!

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