Sgraffito (Module 4, Chpt 4)

Introduction

This proved an unexpectedly interesting and rewarding chapter, giving lots of scope for exciting future ideas. I took the chapter / activities as a whole rather than as one activity and an extra activity. I looked first at technique, then sgraffito with black paint, then scratching through the layers of oils and wax pastels before doing a few final pieces mixing media.

Throughout the exercises I held good to my morning Half hourly sessions of drawing things on my desk, two of these I incorporated into pieces for the chapter. I've added the drawings at the end. 

Looking at the technique:

I last did sgraffito at school or possibly with the children when they were younger and was a bit unprepared for how much I got out of the activity, especially the traditional colours covered with black! Some techniques for covering wax/oil pastels worked better than others, but I'm glad I tried out lots of ideas.

Black Gesso over wax pastels (Neocolour1) using various things to make scratches through the surface. At the end of the day I used wooden skewers and a dry-point tool for quite fine lines. I also switched to black gouache mixed with washing up liquid for the activities.

White Gesso over wax and oil pastels didn't work at all. 

Trying out on black paper

Scratching through the layers, before and after surface treatment:

 Layering up different media. the two circled were the ones I found most satisfying to use:

Applying straight gouache to pastels, certainly seized but what an effect!

Did quick whimsical drawing of flower, scratched through surface, applied gesso as before and did some more scratching:

Sgraffito through black Gesso

I had loads of fun with this and did one piece that made me think quite seriously about doing further more detailed work. 

I started off with a return to letters from Module two, scratchy runes:

Then a move to drawing a Viking motif with a mix of skewer and dry-point tool:

As I mentioned earlier, I started drawing in the morning and the next piece was based on a detail of a sketch of pear blossom:

Last year I did some work around open cup roses - Frances Lester - and using a photograph made another flower based 'black sgraffito' piece

Finally I looked back at the work I did for Chpt 10 Module 3 - I had made a fantasy city street plan and returned to this theme. This was without doubt the highlight of this chapter and I'm certainly going to do some more playing with this idea. I used the dry-point etching tool for this. Scratching was freehand:

Scratching through layers of wax and pastel

I firstly revisited the open cup roses and re-did the base in a mix of neocolour and oil pastel then scratched away through the layers. I didn't photograph the work in progress:

Then working from a drawing of a shell from my half hourly session (drawing below). On brown paper which was really nice to work on:

Finally I chucked two apples on the desk and worked from these:

Adding a colour wash:

Daily Drawings:

A bit misleading really but I did manage 4 drawings over the period of time it took me to do this chapter. I timed myself for half an hour before starting on chapter activities. It's been a really good disciple and I'll be sure to carry on with it:

1: tree bark:

2: pear blossom:

3: Mussel I picked up on the beach - seriously challenging:

4: more shells:

Drawing Textures (Module 4, Chapter 3)

Introduction

This was a bit of a break from the high concentration required for the first two chapters of this module; however I found the second activity in this chapter rather more difficult than I had anticipated at first, finding it a bit of a challenge to identify textures and secondly to draw them without going into too much detail.

Activity 4.3.1

Finding Textures in the house / making wax rubbings

I used newsprint paper for this activty as it's thin enough to make rubbings, but not overly prone to disintegrate. I went around the house and found things to make rubbings of (carpet, walls, floors etc) and filled two A3 sheets of paper:

Making Colour Washes

I didn't think it would be worthwhile laying colour washes on the newsprint paper so made rubbings on layout paper, each texture in three different shades - orange, green and blue:

Based around lines: wood decoration in hall rubbed vertically then horizontally, two types of bamboo mat:

Spots:

Other textures:

Then I colour washed each rubbing separately:

I cut out each rubbing:

Then made a collage using pieces of rubbings:

Then glued these down, making a couple of changes:

I edited the image using some colour filters:

Washed out blue

Bringing out the oranges

Greyscale

Activity 4.3.2

Looking for Textures

I went out and about in the garden looking for textures to work with and then set about drawing these. This was not as easy as I thought it would be, as the drawings were done from direct observation without any tones. I found it easier to work very quickly on these drawings almost without lifting the pencil from the paper and spending more time looking at the textures rather than the drawing:

Lichen: I found plenty of this in the garden but all the same variety. I made two drawings:

Shell. I found a really interesting shell on the beach last week that had some minute growth on it that looked like webbing. I put this through photo editing to enlarge this section of the shell. 

The other end of the shell had an interesting plant growing on it so I drew this too:

Then I photographed some tangled ivy twigs.I drew these then drew a small section with the suckers:

Some penne pasta, very quickly observed:

And finally back to the seaweed: