Our field trip started at 9am at the Sasol Art Museum. Our instructor, Gina, showed us the Solomon Ceasar Malan gallery. Malan did landscapes in the 1800s, and his Kaapstad (Cape Town) works were donated to the museum. He had a very abstract technique in his works; he would draw or paint entire landscapes with simple details that made beautiful and realistic images. I like the simplicity of his work the most. He uses shapes of light and dark intertwined to make detailed images of mountains or valleys, rather than trying to capture every aspect with as much detail as possible. Another really interesting part of his gallery is that he was capturing Cape Town over 200 years ago, so we got to see it before the city took over the base of the mountain.
After the Malan exhibit, Gina showed us the gallery of one of her past mentors, Vivian-something. I really love his work. He takes objects and abstracts them over and over, but you can somehow still tell what they are. For example, my favorite piece, or collection I suppose, is one in which he took a metronome, a vase, and a decorative motif with curls, and abstracted them together. There were at least five different pieces, all painted in muted pastel colors with a few bold pops of detail or color here and there. He also does very realistic paintings from life, my favorite of which was a pot with something cooking in it. The food inside was boiling over the edge and the way he painted it made it look so real I felt I could grab the handle and lift it out of the picture!
After the museum to drove to a vineyard out in Paradykloof. It overlooks the valleys below Stellies and Coetzenberg mountains. We did a charcoal drawing of the landscape for 2 1/2 hours. I got a crazy sunburn on my back and feet, but I got a really nice drawing out of it!
Around noon we headed back to the studio to hang up our work and get our final marks, then took our stuff home. I got everything except my landscape from today... It was mixed up with another girl's work and I didn't find out til the building was closed, so I have to go back today to look for it. Luckily I took a picture while I was still at the vineyard!
So, without further delay, here is my work from the semester! :)
1: Rudy
The first set comes from our first class with a nude model. We were first told to do very fact 30-second to 2-minute gestural drawings of his poses. We developed this to 10-15 minute drawings. All drawings are in ink.
2: Light v. Dark
The second set is our second nude model, this time a female. The goal of this session was to focus on the relationship between light and dark on an object. In the first part, we drew only the parts in shadow in sets of about 2-10 minutes. Next we drew the entire figure for 20 minutes in charcoal. For the last part, we filled two pages with charcoal, then use an eraser and paintbrushes to draw only the light parts of the figure. All drawings are in charcoal.
3: Rudy, again.
Our male model came back for our third model set. This time we were to use everything we'd learned to draw him in a 2-hour session. Pencil.
4: Man v. technology
We were instructed to bring in "technology" then brainstorm ideas on how humans interact with it. We then had to develop this idea into a drawing. My object was my ipod, and my drawing represents how much information can we contain on one small object, yet this object consumes us. Pencil.
5: The looking glass
The picture on the left is my first self portrait using dramatic lighting and a mirror, in pencil. The picture on the right is the homework assignment that followed, also using dramatic lighting and a mirror.
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