Using My Work On Your Website?

Just discovered a website using one of my Drawing 1 sketches in one of their articles. I can't find a way to contact them and ask for credit, so I guess it's out of my hands.

I don't add watermarks to my work here as I want the assessors to be able to see it clearly. That doesn't give anyone the right to re-post it without my permission. It certainly doesn't give you the right to post it without crediting me. If you'll forgive my language, that's a really shitty thing to do and I'm not amused.

At least notify and credit me if you take things, please. Because if I see you using my work without permission, I will look for a way to report it as art theft. 

I've removed almost all of my posts from the blog. The only one that remains is the one with the image that was taken, to prove it's mine. I will, in future, take blogs down when I have passed assessment and for my next courses, I will be adding watermarks.

Cylinders and Shadows

Sorry I haven't updated in a few days. Here are a few things I've been working on:

Here's a better 'cylindrical shapes' sketch, as promised. I'm pretty happy with the composition. I think several of the elipses are slightly wonky, but most of them look correct to me. Perfecting my ability to draw them is an ongoing mission. The objects are correctly proportioned, they look grounded, and are in the correct places. So overall, I'd say this picture is a success.

Now on to the more recent, but less-successful endeavours... *sigh*

Observing Shadow and Light Formations on a Surface

As I worked on this exercise, I ended up with sketches strewn all over the page. I've taken the better ones and re-organised them somewhat on the computer to make this post more coherent.

To begin, I took a few simple objects- a plastic goblet, a small plastic cup and a cardboard tube- and placed them together onto a table. I was relying on natural light streaming in from the conservatory. I completely forgot that natural light has a nasty habit of changing when you're half-way through your sketch. Thus, these sketches are not my best. The shadows went from dark and clear to vague, and back again, every minute or so, which put me off.

I moved the objects on to a different table, hoping that the light would create more distinct shadows, but that really didn't work. I just ended up with different vague shadows.

Here are some more 'finished' sketches:

At this point I just gave up and figured I'd have to attempt this exercise again at some point with a better light source. Oh well.

Tonal Studies

Today's exercise was, if I'm honest, a complete disaster. The first part was to draw out some squares of cross-hatching with different materials and decide which to use for my tonal study.

On my first attempt, I started with dip pen and ink. The ink spilt over the paper. So I started again. The tip of my carbon pencil broke as I was finishing up my first square. I tried to sharpen it, but it broke again. Now my sharpener's not working either. My hand was shaking pretty badly as I worked, so a lot of the hatching lines are wobbly and I ended up making some squares darker than I intended- thus the second square on the top row, drawn with a liquid ink pen, doesn't follow the pattern of all the others. The charcoal also got smudged a bit before I fixed the drawing, so that part is a mess.

I'm not going to show the tonal study I attempted after this; the line sketch was bad enough, and then it just got worse when I tried to add in the shadows with hatching. It's incredibly frustrating, as I know I can do so much better, but it's just not working at all today. I'll just have to take a short break and try again until I produce something half-decent.

First Post

I've created this blog to use as a learning log for the Drawing 1: Drawing Skills course at the Open College of the Arts. I'll be posting notes and observations as I experiment, uploading the sketches and drawings I produce during the course, and critiquing them.

At the moment I'm familiarising myself with the student handbook and ensuring I've got all of the materials I need for my work; right now I only have sketchbooks and paper up to A3 size, but I have ordered an A2 sketchbook which should be coming soon.

I'm looking forward to getting started; my parents generously bought me a few new sketchbooks for this course and I can hear the pages calling out to me every time I walk past them, wanting to be drawn on...