Tag Light

Oh, That Looks Interesting…

Kate McCalmont-Woods Leave a comment

I often become distracted; I’ll put a pan of water on to boil and then get distracted by something and go wandering off, only remembering that I was meant to be boiling some eggs when the pan has boiled dry.

I was cutting some lino yesterday and I collected the bits of lino on a piece of tissue paper. As I was lifting it up to dispose of them I thought, ‘oh that looks interesting’. And off I went. I wrapped some tissue paper around an old photo frame. I couldn’t be botherered to go off and find clamps etc so I balanced the frame on some books on two chairs. I then set up a couple of anglepoise lamps. Lying flat on my back on the kitchen floor allowed me to photograph the tissue paper from underneath. I experimented with the lino bits as well as some packaging which I had saved, just in case it might come in useful.

To save me from getting up and down, I enlisted some help with the sprinkling. These are the results:

I really like the effect of the lino bits – they are dynamic and have the sense of someone having just made some quick gestural marks. I like the added depth provided by the bits that are further away from the surface of the tissue paper.

I really like the effect in the photos. The first one in both sets is without any backlight and it almost looks like something trying to break through the tissue paper – like something crawling under the skin. It would have been good to try with just a few bits, but by the time I had the thought, I had put everything away, but something for the future.

I also made a video of the ‘sprinkling’. Otto, the dog, was in the kitchen at the time and decided to have a bark and come close to my head grunting like a pig. I was in the process of cleaning up the audio – I was even going to try out Garage Band – but then decided not to – I liked it how it is. I used some audio effects in Capcut – Deep 2, Echo and Super Reverb. I wanted to make the audio unexpected – the sprinkling of something light has been distorted so that it sounds unusually heavy and the background noises are unexpected when heard with the visual which I think makes it more interesting and unexpected.

Video of Sprinkling

Light & Shadows

Kate McCalmont-Woods Leave a comment

I attended another of Chris Koning’s online drawing workshops at lunchtime, to brush up.

She explained the concept of light logic:

  • Highlight – the brightest light
  • Cast Shadow – caused by the object blocking the light and so the darkest dark
  • Reflected Light – dim light bounced back up from light on the surface
  • Crest/Form Shadow – shadow which lies on the crest of a rounded form between highlight and reflected light

When drawing we are not interested in contrast, but in value ie what something looks like against something else.

‘The Artist’s Mother’, Georges Seurat, 1883

This drawing by Seurat is made up of lots of different areas of tone. The parting in the hair is not a definite line; it has been created by different areas of tonal value. There are no harsh lines anywhere and there is very little contrast in the image. It is Seurat’s flawless light logic which allows us to create the rest of the information ourselves.

We then did a quick 10 minute exercise. We lightly shaded in a rectangle. Then we were shown a blurred image and told to fill in the darkest areas and then use an eraser to show the lightest. We then had to fill in the rest of the tonal values in the knowledge that nothing else will be as dark or as light as the existing areas of tone.

Chris then inverted the image and made it clearer:

It was a helpful reminder not to ‘see’ what I’m drawing and thereby create an expectation, but just to see shapes of tone, and to start from the general, keeping in mind the relationships between areas in the whole of the composition, and then move towards the specific.