1.1 Research Task
Artist's Sketchbooks
Danny Gregory 1960-
Capturing a moment of the every day. "Making everyday matter".
Gregory sketches in pen and ink in journals, often over a double page.
The colours are so clean and vibrant against the black lines. The sketches make the situation, like breakfast look more exciting than the real deal.
The shadows in blue are a creative and striking way of achieving tonal changes on the white porcelain.
The lines are far from perfect or precise, they just flow with a natural fluidity.
Edward Hopper 1882-1967
A visual response to the scene. Beautiful, peaceful drawings using a combination of pencil, charcoal and watercolour.
The sketches are so atmospheric, a sense of belonging to the scenes bellow. Hopper includes light and shadow, dark tones that not only depict the scene but the mood also.
Detailed sketches that are so accomplished.
The figures in the drawings are crucial in the interpretation. Often alone, they offer a link between the viewer and the sketch. Drawing the viewer in with wonderment.
The tones are dark, sombre and moody. The sketches detailed and often layered with the background, middle and foreground. The scenes complete.
Hopper also made written notes, often in pen alongside the drawing.
Frida Kahlo 1907-1954
Such a unique sketchbook. A diary. Kahlo confided all of her emotions daily in her diary, and used sketches and colours as a way of communicating her daily thoughts, as much as she used her words.
She also developed a language of colour to express herself. Blue for "Electricity and purity". Yellow for "Madness, illness, fear, part of the sun and happiness"
The sketches in her diaries are impulsive, with such wild spontaneity, no apparent planning, just an injection of emotion onto the page. The drawings work harmoniously alongside her words. Colours are loud and vibrant, as I would imagine her soul to have been. Her sketches have much to say, they take over the page and speak.
Frida also used her diaries to understand her physical pain. "Feet, what do I need you for, if I have wings to fly?". Words taken from a diary extract the day before her leg amputation.
David Hockney 1937-
Pen sketches fill Hockney's sketchbooks. People and places.
The sketches are partly coloured, partly black and white. Some appear complete studies and some incomplete.
As there are so many people, postures and poses have been captured in line quickly.
Throughout the sketchbooks there are views and perspectives, looking through doors and windows. Hockney uses the pen to map out the lines of his view.
There is a fluidity to the books, his style is distinctive and present throughout this sketches, a style that works.
I like the use of different colours of pens, this adds interest as well as the separation of components in the sketches. In some cases only a single jumper in a sketch will be coloured in, enough to separate this from the rest of the drawing.
Vincent Van Gogh 1853-1890
Van Gogh used lines and textures to capture his scenes. Often in pencil he worked to create a sketch that contained movement and life, people and landscapes.
I like how he builds the scene in line, even building in the shadows on the pavement in line, The same lines he would create the walls of the street with.
William Turner 1775-1851
Hundreds of sketchbooks still remain of the career of JMW Turner. Pages filled with pencil, chalk and watercolour preparatory sketches and study drawings catalogue Turner's progress and development. During Turner's lifetime, his sketchbooks remained private, only available for wider viewing after his death. Perhaps he didn't want to give his ideas and techniques away, or perhaps they were a part of him that he enjoyed to keep only to himself.
Extensive sketches suggest he was never without a sketchbook.
The watercolour washes, filled with blues, mauves and indigos move together to produce wonderful flows of colour. Known as 'scale practice' , a watercolour would be spread across the whole page before adding a darker tone of that colour. Even in the preparatory stage, Turner knew exactly how to capture the scene in accomplished sketches.
English landscapes, studies of the sea, of sunlight are all worked through. The sketches are beautiful, harmonious, atmospheric and detailed. Emotive and real.
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