Surreal interior perspective

This is a challenge to work on our skills with perspective.

My first attempt, the advice was to make it larger, and give more detail to the object on the table. Also that the pear needed to have foreground to appear to be visually in the interior

Although these appear to be the same size, the print below is actually more that twice the size of the first sketch..

A topography of detail

We were set a challenge of completing a hugely magnified drawing.  I do hope that you can see the pistachios in this drawing/painting.

Mark making

The set up for this exercise was a still life with a light underneath a jumble of items, stools, lamp stands, chairs, an old vacuum cleaner.  Our challenge was to examine the negative spaces and use short marks to create tonal variations.

A still life abstraction

Our challenge - the problem that we had to solve, was to pick 3 to 5 elements of a jumbled, huge still life, and create new imagined textures for the surfaces in an abstraction.

Some print work - lino cuts

My apologies for the quality of the photos - I need to figure out a better process.

This was my first attempt at printing, "Grasslands".  Really I was experimenting with different types of cuts.

This is a "suicide print" cutting the lino after making the first print of grey ink.  Our theme this term is botany - how we can use botany in learning art processes. Further, the challenge for this print was to convey inside and outside.  The title, "Inside/Outside Pine Needles".

self portrait

I do have an assignment for a self portrait, but this is really just a warm up and to satisfy a curiosity.  I wanted to see how my drawing techniques would translate to the tablet, so I have been messing around a bit.  Self portraits are another level of difficulty with respect to seeing.  Not only do I stop "seeing" what I am drawing (I am too close and invested), but it is weird to try and "see" one's self.  Anyway.  Here is a little bit of playfulness.

Paper cutting assignment

This assignment was intended to demonstrate positive and negative spaces, and the relationships between background and foreground (or object/subject).  We were to represent someone's shape.  I chose to use myself as subject, and I wanted to explore the background as strongly black and white, my own boundaries or limitations in shades of gray, and the use of bright colours in loose Fibonacci spirals, positive and negative, to symbolize the desire for beautiful ideas.