Blogs

  • OCA Foundations Drawing, Part Four, Project 4.2 – Enlarging an image

    OCA Foundations Drawing, Part Four, Project 4.2 – Enlarging an image

    Exercise: Breaking the image down Increase the scale of one of your drawings by drawing a grid of squares over it and drawing the same number of squares onto a larger sheet of paper. Copy the image box by box onto the larger sheet. Despite the roughness of the drawing I was quite pleased with Read more

  • OCA Foundations Drawing – Part Four, Negative and Positive Spaces

    OCA Foundations Drawing – Part Four, Negative and Positive Spaces

    Project 4.1 Simple objects Exercise: Still life Make up a still-life group using four or five similar plain, long, unpatterned fruit, vegetables or manufactured objects…Draw the same scene three times using a different medium each time…Concentrate on the positive as well as negative shapes. I started by experimenting with a group of plum tomatoes, blocking out the Read more

  • On Kiki Smith

    Kiki Smith is an American artist, born in Germany in 1954. Her work addresses themes such as birth, sex, the human condition and the natural world. She was brought up within the spheres of minimalism and abstract art (her father was Tony Smith, a minimalist sculptor. Family friends included Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko). In Read more

  • OCA Foundations Drawing, Part 3

    OCA Foundations Drawing, Part 3

    3.1 Man-made form and basic perspective Exercise: Open Cupboard The point of this exercise was to draw the contents of an open kitchen door that contains an assortment of manufactured objects, taking note of the angle of the open door. “use line only to create a sense of structure” … “use perspective as a tool Read more

  • OCA Foundations Drawing – Final piece, ‘A Spoon’

    Draw what you see reflected in the spoon using variations of tone. Depict depth, shine and roundness. I tried very hard to look carefully at the shapes that were made in the spoon and to accurately depict them in the drawing. I’m quite pleased with the result, especially as  initially I wasn’t happy with my Read more

  • OCA Foundations Drawing – Part 2, Exercises

    Circle to Ball, shape to form Draw three identical circles and shade each one indicating a different light source. In my first attempt (top, left) to try to turn a circle into a ball with a light source, leaving a shadow, I don’t think I was very successful. The ball doesn’t seem anchored and I don’t think Read more