Today, the 4th of February, we went out to take pictures per usual. As can be seen on the title, we learnt how to use manual settings which combines aperture and shutter on one scale.We have learnt to use aperture and shutter speed however, it was on automatic. We learnt how to do this manually by using the wheel to adjust the aperture and the shutter by looking inside the camera. We can tell it needs adjusting by using the scale.

For the panning shot, I used 1/50 shutter speed on Manual settings. I did this by turning the wheel. To make it appear bright, I pressed on the ISO button and turned the wheel until the arrow on the meter was in the middle. I did the same with all the pictures until the ISO was in the middle of the meter.

For the low shutter speed, I used 1/15 shutter speed. It made the moving image blurry but made my background clear. This was a pretty difficult shot to take. The weather was gloomy and I had a low ISO. So, the pictures I took at first were dark but it gradually got better as I adjusted the ISO to a higher setting.

High shutter speed requires 1/500 shutter speed. Again, I turned the wheel to 1/500 and and adjusted the brightness again. This was a pretty quick shot as everything happened so quickly.

High and Low Aperture photos were taken quite quickly. I held down the AV button and turned the wheel to high or low. The low aperture photos made my background blurry but my foreground clear. The high aperture setting made my foreground and background clear.

Overall, I felt like this was a good experience. I did everything automatically that I didn’t know how to use it manually. I also learned that I could control the brightness/sensitivity using ISO. I liked that I took many pictures for my sketchbook so that I can look back and see what I could improve on. I did not like how some of my pictures were either too dark or too light. I will improve on my photography spills my making sure I check the meter before I take pictures.

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January 21: First, I did a line drawing using different medias such as continuous line drawing, short lines, furthest from the tip, two colours, broken lines, and combined drawings from all the different medias. For the next one, tonal drawing, I used dots, circles, shadings, tonal drawing and cross-hatching to draw it out.

Everything was done speedily as I have done this before in previous classes, using lines and tones from different medias in different classes like 3D Design classes and Fine Art classes for tones and Graphics and Illustration, Textiles and Fine Art for lines. Doing it separately, was easy and simple to do however, I found drawing the boxes and scaling it hard to do. Although I have done this before, it was difficult to draw it accordingly to the drawing I drew from the FitzWilliam Museum. Drawing the line and the tonal one separately was difficult to make it similarly shaped between the grid lines. So when I put them together, as line AND tonal drawing, it did not fit very well.

It is a shame that some of the line and tonal drawings did not really fit together as I cut the grids out and put them together. I think it would have fit really well if I did. I like the line drawing as I found it interesting. Lines in whatever shape or form can make up an image. I struggled with the tonal one as there was barely any shading on the armour so I had to add some tones in it to stand out.

Overall, I feel like this was a good practice for me to improve my line and tonal skills. Hopefully I will take a look at my negatives and further improve them by producing better work, putting my heart and soul into it.

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January 17: I did a tonal drawing with my group members, Astrid and Niko. On an A0 paper, we started drawing the picture on the left. Firstly, we used a long ruler to split the paper in 4 equal parts and drew the outline of the picture using a HB pencil. We took a lot of time as we had a light argument about how big we should have drawn it. We overcame and came to a solution. We looked at the lines we drew of the picture and looked at how close it must be. We were running out of time and there was a 15 minute break. We did not take a break as we needed to finish the drawing. We could not finish drawing with a pencil so we just used charcoal to outline and filled it in as we drew. For the darker parts, we used charcoal without touching it. We found that if we touched it, the darkness of the charcoal will transfer to the other side, making it lighter. We pressed lightly on the areas that has light contrasts and for the dark tones, we did not touch it at all. For mid tones, we pressed hard on the paper with our charcoals and used our fingers to brush the access darkness away. We often used our fingers to blend out any harshness.

Overall, it was a good learning experience as we played with charcoal. Our hands got messy in the process but that was fine. I think we did a pretty decent job with the light and dark tones. I liked how our teamwork played out. It didn’t start out well but it ended out great. We also helped each other by taking turns outlining, shading and filling it with different tones which was good. We also successfully managed to scale it really well. I do not like that we did not manage to draw the white part out on the bottom left side of the drawing. But, I will take this into consideration and pay a much closer detail to the work we did and make sure to always communicate with my teammates.

This is a Continuous Line drawing that I did a few weeks ago. In order to make wire portraits, we needed to have a portrait of someone. I have done wire work before but it was mostly used for practical things like making a keychain ring or an actual ring with thin metal wire.

I had a hard time in class as the wires we used were thicker than the ones I used before. At first, we practiced twisting using tweezers with thick wire cut in half. It proved to be quite a challenge for me as I have small fat hands. The tweezers were huge for me but I successfully twisted it after much difficulty and pain. Not only did I twist it, I made the two wires firm and strong that it barely moved.

The wire portrait was an even bigger hurdle for me as my drawing was very detailed. But, I was determined to do it. I first used a long piece of thin wire (about 6 meters) and started. Like Alexander Calder, I put the wire over my shoulder and did it using methods like twisting and spirals. I used the tweezers to create a spiral effect as I twisted it around the tweezers.

Overall, I’m pretty satisfied with the wire portrait I did as it kind of looks like the continuous line portrait. I liked the brows and the eyes that I did. It is a bit of a shame that I did not do the shoulders and clothes. I reckon I could have done the coil effect on the clothes. It would have looked pretty cool if I did that. Taking these all into account, I will further improve myself by buying a pair of tweezers and some wires of different diameters. This way, I can practice using them, strengthening my hand muscles so that I can be accustomed to it.

It was the 24th of January and I had Textiles. It wasn’t my first time using a sewing machine. In my old school, we used to do it every week for one year. However, it has since been 3 years since I touched one so it felt familiar yet foreign to me.

We were given 3 pieces of paper with lines on them and we were asked to sew the paper without the thread. I started sewing after listening to instructions. Honestly, when I heard the instructions, everything came back to me quite clearly. I then started to sew the paper and I was glad I remembered everything. The needle went in and out of the paper as I stepped on the paddle. I did however lose some finesse as I often went out of the lines I was supposed to trace with the needle. The lesson helped me to remember how to insert the bobbin into the sewing machine as it is very complex to me.

After that, I started to use a thread to sew on a canvas cloth. I used a white thread at first because there were no black threads and I was fine with it however, as I sewed, it was not very visible to the eye. I carried on anyways. I then used a black material with holes (mesh) in them to give the helmet some tones. I was satisfied with this as I managed to pierce the cloth correctly. I became irritated at my white thread and begun using a black one however, time was running out so I did it very quickly. It was a shame I only managed to outline my armour because I felt like I could have done pretty well.

Overall, I felt that I could overcome my problem with a bit of carefulness and lots of practice. I also feel that time management could be better. Next time, I will speedily do my work so I can complete it faster and better.

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On the 8th of January, I had my very first Graphics and Illustrations class. It was a new environment for me. Before college, I did not take art in Secondary School so it felt foreign yet familiar as I enjoy the subject. 

In the beginning of the lesson, I was asked to do something called Continuous Line Drawing. It is a method of drawing without lifting your pen at all. With my limited background of Art, I knew what it was. I just didn’t know how to do it. I had no experience whatsoever. First, I was given a portrait of Helena Bonham Carter to draw on. I didn’t really know what to do with her face so I just went with the flow, with my felt line pen. I accentuated her face and gave her facial features more definition, making her appear skinnier than she actually is. Time was running out and I found my pen slowly drying out. I only had a 5 minutes to complete her and I became extremely anxious. I completed it feeling not so satisfied with my work. I like that it still looks like her but, I am extremely dissatisfied with how I drew her nose. I should have given her nose a natural contour instead of just outlining her nose and filling it blindly with pen ink. Normally, I would take hours to complete one artwork. I am obsessed with perfection. If I do not like something, I would scrap it and throw it away. However, I did not have the luxury of throwing it away so I thought of this as a learning experience for me to improve what I could not deliver with her portrait. Ultimately, I think the reason why I didn’t do quite well here was my lack of experience and my anxiety that filled me with too much worry thus affecting my artwork. I will continue practicing with Continuous Lines as I think it is an interesting way of drawing things and honing my craft.

The next task was to draw a portrait of a girl in front of me, in 5 minutes. I was told that the only way this can be delivered, is to look at the person in front of me longer than the time spent on looking at my paper. I was horrified with this. Thoughts like “What if I butcher her face??” and “What happens if everything is not in proportion??” ran through my head. However, the timer started and once again, I lifted my felt line pen and started to draw. I first started with her hair. Her hair was slightly curly but still straight. I felt like her hair was the easiest to draw as it was just drawing lines. I then moved onto her face which absolutely killed me. In my opinion, the person in front of me does not look like the drawing I drew in real life. I made her eyes too big and too wide instead of them being small and rounded. She has thick, plump lips and a tall nose which I gave her but was poorly done. She also had a cheekbones which I attempted to give her but failed. In the result of me looking at her too long, my hand, holding the pen, pressing hard on the paper, went back and forth too many times, giving her a look that looks like she got cut by a knife and it had to be stitched back together. I then moved on to her body. The body was the hardest as I was running low on time. The time was 1 minute and I had no clue on how to draw her clothes as she wore a leopard printed blouse. Obviously, I couldn’t shade all the leopard prints within the given time so I had to make due by just drawing circles as best I could. By the end it was done, my right hand was cramped and in so much pain. The girl I drew laughed at how I depicted her, melting away all my worries. However, what I drew was so imperfect to the point I just wanted to rip it out and start again. I knew I couldn’t so I just let it be. Right now, I’m honestly glad that I let it be because without it, I wouldn’t have a starting point to learn all my mistakes from. With this drawing, I am reminded to be loose. In conclusion, Continuous line drawing does not have to be perfect and should not be perfect. I learnt that the hand should be slack. When doing this method, I must throw away everything on my mind and focus on what is in front of me.