Self portrait I.

 Self portrait II

 Self portrait III

Artist’s Statement

Three self-portraits exploring tone, using soft pastel on paper

I have found the OCA drawing course challenging and interesting on a number of levels. Importantly for me, it helped to pinpoint weaknes...

Assignment 4

I spent a while looking at figures and examples of work I found interesting. It's too easy to just plump for an obvious pose or angle and I wanted something more interesting to engage both me and the viewer.

I actually did these two works in reverse: I did t...

Exercise 1: Facial features

I found I actually enjoyed this part. I probably didn't do enough due to conflicting demands on my time, but I found it much easier to create convincing drawing of constituent parts of the face, than the full head; as I did with parts of the...

Project 3: Form, basic shapes.

Exercise 1: a 1-hour seated pose; I tried several different poses first, sketching roughly in pastel:

I have to admit I struggled with this one: not sure why, but I found the furniture - chair legs and back - confusing and difficult to enga...

Project 4: structure

A variety of drawings and sketches looking at the structures underlying the human figure. Sadly no skeletons were hanging around my studio, so I turned to the internet for source images - thankfully there are lots. So here are some of the pieces I p...

Some online research into figure drawing & painting both historical and contemporary brought up a lot of images and styles; here is a tiny selection that I found, some on Pinterest, without proper referencing, which isn't great for an academic study, but from an aesthe...

I thought a bit of historical research would be helpful. The current Raphael exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford comes in handy. These images are taken from 'Raphael, the drawings', Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 2017. 

His work is incredible: in this image above...

OCA, Part 3 Reflection on tutor feedback

Really helpful feedback from my OCA tutor: positive about progress, indicating where & how I can improve, specific comments on both strengths & weaknesses; suggested reading. Acknowledging & accepting subjects I found challenging...

So this is the piece I made for 'Assignment 3', looking at perspective and including both man-made and natural forms. Not much in the way of linear perspective going on here, so I brought the gravel path into the foreground. The house is too concealed for much per...