Reflective writing workshop

The following post is the result of homework given during a zoom-hosted OCA workshop on reflective writing techniques. This is taking place over two consecutive Saturdays in July. In the intervening week students lucky enough to be included were tasked to come up with a short blog post (250 words – exceeded here) presumably for the purposes of critiques during the anticipated second session this coming Saturday morning.

Drawing 1: Drawing Skills: Assignment 5: Personal Project: “Hypervigilance”

Having almost come to the end of Drawing One: Drawing Skills, I approached this final assignment with some trepidation. I felt somewhat like a battery hen let loose from its cage in that this was the first occasion, in the course so far, that I had been asked to come up with my own initial ideas.

I settled upon developing a self-portrait from my sketchbook. Having been inspired by Facing Death, a self-portrait by Picasso, and having a yen to experiment with print, I decided to create a short series of experimental collagraphs based on my self-portrait sketch. With little idea as to what the outcome may look like, I set about drawing, in my studio, the enlarged (flipped) image onto a sheet of A1 mountboard.

Such a large relief plate necessitated the use of a baren. It produced a grainy/patchy print. However, I persevered. Inspired by Picasso’s collages in the Picasso and Paper exhibition at the Royal Academy, I realised there was scope for turning it into a mixed media piece. I cannibalised three other prints – cutting and pasting from one to the other. This process felt a bit sacrilegious in that I could almost hear the ghosts of purist printers past protesting in my head.

There was a stern quality to the expression on the face which made me think of my tendency towards hypervigilance. The piece then had its title. Feeling the need to soften the image somehow, I added flowers cut out of photocopies of doodles of daisies I had produced following a morning walk in the countryside. This also added some colour contrast together with the addition of yellow and green to make the purple ink “pop” and gave the image a bit more appeal.

When requested, my brother-in-law, an artist himself, fed back that the image put him firmly in mind of Byzantine Art. He said that I had even added a hint of a halo around my head using yellow paper. This had been unintentional on my part. But as soon as Byzantine Art was mentioned, I realised the connection as, though I have no inclination toward organised religion, I do have a penchant for iconographic Christian images. Included amongst my collection is a small plaque depicting a detail from Vladimir’s Virgin.

Where do I go from here? My brother-in-law liked Hypervigilance so much that he bought it. This left me financially the richer, but poorer as regards a tangible outcome for Assignment 5. I have the two remaining prints which I managed to pull from the plate before the PVA-coated cardboard lost its integrity. When I look at the image, I feel it is a bit flat and could use more depth. I tried adding Conte stick around the jawline to the subsequent version and this appeared to help. I shall continue to work on this in a similar vein.

Update:

I did not receive feedback from the workshop tutor as I failed to upload this post to the correct Gdrive. Instead, I emailed it directly. Lesson learned, follow instructions!

References:

Detail, Unknown artist. (first third of the 12th Century) Our Lady of Vladimir, [tempera on wood]
Hall Museum Church of St Nicholas, Moscow. [Online image] Available from: https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/hdsjournal/wounded-presence-virgin-vlaidimir-icon. [Accessed 21st Jul 2020]

Picasso. P (2020) Facing Death. 1971 [crayon on paper] Picasso and Paper. Royal Academy. 25th January – 13th April 2020.

Walker. M. (2020) Hypervigilance #1 & #2. [Mixed media A1 mountboard. 84.1 cm x 59.4 cm.]