Tutor report

 

Student name	Anne Macleod	Student number	497519
Course/Module	Drawing 2	Assignment number	1

 

Overall Comments

Dear Anne, thank you for sending me your work, its great to see it. Thank you also for the outstanding clarity of presentation. You make it very easy for me to follow your ideas. Overall it is great to see you are pushing yourself and being very creative in your response to the projects. I feel that projects 1, 3 and your assignment pieces work especially well. Already I can see evidence that you are developing a strong personal voice, or voices, which I think will continue to grow naturally as you, go along. Your thoughtful progress through project one is an excellent exemplar of drawing as a tool for enquiry. As you say “a good start”

Assessment potential

 I understand your aim is to go for the PaintingDegree and that you plan to submit your work for assessment at the end of this course. From the work you have shown in this assignment, and providing you commit yourself to the course, I suggest that you are likely to be successful in the assessment.

 

Feedback on assignment

 This is a thorough an interesting project. Your process of evaluation is very articulate and self-aware. It is good to see you taking stock at intervals during the project and gathering comments from your peers. These are both very worthwhile activities. Overall I think this unit has revealed a number of strengths and possible directions for your work. I don’t think you need to decide now and it may be worth thinking about synthesizing some of the things learnt in the projects rather than choosing one route. The drawings you produced were fluent and effective and although you felt they didn’t develop enough, there is definite evidence that you headed towards a strong conclusion. As I looked at them I found myself wanting to know that they were still drawings of your bookshelf? Was this the case or had you moved away at that stage? For example the one with watercolour works well but the colours seemed a bit arbitrary. For me the work is most successful when (abstract or not) it has a strong basis in the experienced world. Your experimentations with other materials are good to see also. The later works look like you have mastered the tape and bent it to your needs. I think if you are interested in using found materials further it would be worth looking at the work of Cornelia Parker. She is an extreme case but her care in using and understanding the meanings held by materials is outstanding. Here is an image of a drawing made with canvas strips from a Turner painting.

I thought the comment from a fellow student about topographical imagery was a good one and may be worth looking at further but maybe this is too literal. This is an early drawing by Whistler. There is more detail on this below.

 Also have you seen the cross sections of old master paintings made by the national gallery? For me these could provide an interesting bridge between your “barcode” drawings and the beautiful renderings of pebbles.

Projects & Learning Logs

Project One.

The thoughtful process exhibited here is very strong. I like that you deliberately started with subjects that you would usually avoid in your painting. The results show a strong sense of rhythm and an ability to use observation creatively. Your reference to bar codes is an interesting one as drawing too can be viewed as a way of coding reality. It reminds me of Torsten Lauschman’s video work Curtain, 2006 which was made by translating data into visual form.

http://www.torstenlauschmann.com/#/the-curtain-2006/4549785527

And Rachel Whiteread’s drawings of parquet floors.

 You might also want to look at the paintings Claude Heath makes from his drawings.

It also looks like your visit to the Alisdair Gray exhibition was very useful. His work as City Recorder does look interesting and I can see how your proposal for making paintings at your job centre makes perfect sense. To quote my overused phrase, go for it!

Project 2

As you note this project doesn’t work quite as well as project one. However it has strong qualities in terms of illustration. It might have benefited from an even more daring approach to composition. Have you come across the Diebenkorn retrospective at the Royal Academy? There are lots of images online. Compositionally they are quite dramatic.

 

To be perfectly honest although strong in ways I am not sure Blackadder is the best example for a current student. Instead have a look at Kathy Prenderghast, Miranda Whall and Zoe Mendelson for a bit more challenge and relevance. If you like The Joy of Sex you might like the last two!

Project 3

These are very strong images; although the scale is difficult to judge on the blog what is most striking about them is the abstract quality of the marks when blown up. They look like a Cy Twombly. But then they coalesce into a beautifully observed figurative image. This is an idea that is definetly worth looking at further if you are excited by it. Your use of layering is also excellent, I think pastel is a difficult medium to use well.

If you are interested in exploring this further have a look at:

Gwen Hardie – meticulously painted enlarged images of the human body. Up close they hover between abstraction and alien landscapes.

and Paula MacArthur, she also works on exploded imagery.

 

Project 4

Again you are very thorough in your approach to the project. I especially like the way you keep pushing until you have it right. Your forms are strong and you create a convincing impression of the weight of one object on another (possibly slightly more in the second drawing than the third). You have covered quite a lot of ground in the four projects (this is good) and all are successful. In a way this makes life more difficult in choosing a personal direction as any would do. At the moment just carry on as you are but try not to think of each project as necessarily being separate.

 

Suggested reading/viewing

In terms of viewing, I have mentioned lots of people above. Try to pick the ones you feel are most relevant for a closer look.

Paula MacArthur

Gwen Hardie

Kathy Prenderghast

Miranda Whall

Zoe Mendelson

Cy Twombly

Rachel Whiteread

Cornelia Parker

 

Pointers for the next assignment

In summary, don’t worry about a personal voice yet, but make sure you are drawing things that interest you, even if you have to twist the project a bit. Have a look at the artists above; Parker is particularly relevant for the next unit. Also a quick look at Claude Heath’s process between drawing and painting might be useful. Generally I would say keep going as you are. Your approach and enthusiasm is excellent.

 

Tutor Name	Annabel Dover
Date	7/04/15
Next Ass due	7/06/15