In traditional drawing and painting this year we expanded or drawing skills by starting with some quite unusual tasks. One of them consisted of a drawing of a famous art work of “Igor Stravinsky” by Pablo Picasso. Although the unusual part lays in HOW we drew it rather than WHAT we drew. We drew Igor Stravinsky upside down! I had never done anything like this in art classes prior. Everyone in the class was visibly nervous. Hoping that theirs will turn out good. We did the activity for about 2 classes (3 hours) and the result was astonishing! I didn’t know that it would turn out as well as it did. I was really impressed with my effort!
We did some other activities that involved drawings but with an interesting twist. One of which was called the “Le Jockey” by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. This drawing was to help us focus on a concept called negative space. Negative space is drawing the weird shapes around the Main attraction of the art piece. In my case it was the horse and rider.
These tasks we did were actually really beneficial to my drawing skills. I learnt so much about the actual techniques that artists use to make their art work stand out. Not just the techniques were important though. The biggest Practice-point I took away was that “ART TAKES TIME”. I feel I always knew this but I never really applied it into my work. Finally I got my chance. It was the day of the biggest project in art this semester, the still life. We had done some practice of drawing still life in the past but nothing likes this. In the center of the room lay the massive still life. It took up two tables and included so many colourful cultural items and plants.
After 2 weeks the still life was over. We all had drew a portion of the massive still life. But the job wasn’t over yet. We needed to move on to the egg tempera.
Egg tempera was a special form of art using eggs, water and special powder to make paint. We use holy colours that consisted of: Green, Blue, Purple, Orange, Yellow, Red and a special small cup of black powder.
Behind the creation of the paint was a process involving the draining of egg yolks from the sack. We did this by first breaking the egg and draining the whites. We learnt a special trick to drain most of the egg white by transferring the yolk from one half of the egg shell to the other. Once drained the egg yolk was placed on a paper towel to absorb residual whites and keep the sack and the egg for the egg tempera separate. Finally we placed it in a little container and added one teaspoon of water and one teaspoon of the holy colour.
Dealing with eggs was very risky and messy and all of us made our fair-share of mistakes. But this was a learning experience and it taught me how to be organised around messy situations and make sure to clean up afterwards. I also got really good at cracking eggs!
After our still life painting was transferred to a canvas and our paints were made. It was time to start painting. In this phase of our project we learnt about layering and using the correct brush for the job.
Overall, I found Art this semester really fun. We covered an insane amount of content from simple drawing to turning eggs into paint!
These activities reached into my capabilities as well. But for me, the two most prominent were “Problem-solving” and “Organisation”.
Towards the 3rd quarter of the semester we reached a big problem. The fridge in which our egg paint was preserved in was disconnected! All of our paint smelled horrible and was ruined. This forced us to create new paint to continue our paintings. I used my problem solving skills to get around this. I decided to divide my responsibilities and made 4 paints on the first day and 3 the next. So I had time to focus on not just the paint but my visual diary and my colour composition. Organisation was also a huge part. I needed to keep my visual diary in check and make sure that it was up to date on everything I had done. I even included a little pocket so I could slip in a laminated sheet that would end horribly if glued in.
I learnt A lot in art this year and I would recommend it to either people who love drawing or people who want to learn it.