Category: Drawing

Drawing at Night

When writing an essay about Stalemate, an etching by Dutch artist Marcelle Hanselaar, I found myself very inspired by the way she works and conducts herself. Hanselaar says that painting is for the day and drawing is for the night, after hearing this, I tried it for myself, and I think she is right. Whenever I paint once the sun has gone down it feels a bit clumsy – the subtlety of colour is hard to detect in unnatural light. I have found that monochrome pencil drawing is about the relationship of tone which works even better at night.

Inspired by Hanselaar’s words, I draw at night when my ideas and imagination are most active. Sometimes I work from reality when I feel I’m unable to depict what I’m imagining. Depicting from imagination is unplanned and flows from my head, to my hand, onto the paper. That is how the image below came into existence.

Tags darksurrealism, dottiemayaston, Drawing, dreamart, fantasyart, Surrealist

Drawing Uncategorized

Drawing Before University

Post author By Dottie-may
Post date 10th Mar 2021
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My foremost experience of drawing from life was within the months before starting my at university degree. Prior to studying, I was home-educated by my mother, due to my school lacking the support required for my learning disabilities. As part of my home-education, my mother encouraged me and my siblings to draw from imagination every day.

On the lead-up to university I decided to broaden my abilities through a sketchbook of observational drawings. Initially this sketchbook was just to improve my draughtsmanship but looking back, these drawings hold more feeling than a mere diagram. Although I don’t study these sketches for my current paintings, I feel there is a connection to my current approach to seeing as well as handling of different media.

Tags art, artstudent, Drawing, sketchbook

Drawing Painting Uncategorized

Effeminate Watercolours

Recently I have had an obsession with using watercolour for figure drawing. This burst of colour was somewhat unexpected from my usual medium of the graphite pencil but not an unwelcome one. The vibrant colour and fluidity of these recent drawings contrast with the sharpness of my previous grey studies.

© 2020 Dottie-May Aston. Effeminate Watercolour

I found it challenging to use this medium in the life room. I had grown used to going at my own pace at home with online resources making it difficult to finish my drawings in the five-minute period of the short pose. With the longer poses I was left with too much time on my hands!

Due to COVID-19 I was only getting a quarter of the time that I would normally get in the class, the remaining hours being self-directed. I ended up making the difficult decision to drop my Life Drawing module. With my painting module being self-directed and all my written work I have, I couldn’t motivate myself to produce live drawings when I couldn’t go to class.

Drawing Uncategorized

Dissections

© 2020 Dottie-May Aston. *Nasal Cavity*.

At the start of this term me and Jonathan sat in on a horse dissection. To begin with it was horrid! After the initial shock of the situation and the overpowering smell, I was put at ease to be told that the animals had been ethically sourced. That is, they died from natural causes and their bodies used for educating future vets for them to better care for the animals. This information helped me get over the fact I was watching students cut open an animal. I was then able to focus on my sketches. The environment was no different from that of a painting workshop, people chatting about mundane subjects, giving the class a fairly normal vibe.

© 2020 Dottie-May Aston. Insides on the Outsides.

Attending these dissections over several weeks had improved both my paintings and drawing ability. Drawing something that I have never seen before in person was an exciting challenge and it has changed my perception completely. After the first class my eyes had started to see differently, making me more conscious of what’s under the skin, and how movements are made in mammals.As the dissection is a continual process, the whole composition could change in an instant. This has forced me to look even harder than I would normally. I’ve found that it has made my abilities with mark making as well as my drawing skills from life and imagination have both noticeably improved.

© 2020 Dottie-May Aston. *A Horse Kicking In the Bucket*.

The studies are all from my A5 sketchbook. To see all of them visit my sketchbook gallery. Most were done standing up which was somewhat intense, although I am used to standing up for art workshops. It is difficult to drawing without an easel, not to mention arriving at the dissection tiers due to it being a long steep walk to the campus. Like the smell, I slowly got used to this. I hope you found this interesting! Your welcome to share your thoughts in the comments, thank you.

Tags anatomy, art, artgallery, artstudent, dissections, dotmaston, Drawing, femaleartist, fineart, horrorartwork, house, housedissections, studio, surrealhorror

Drawing Uncategorized

Life Studies at Home

This is a little insight on what it’s been like as an art student doing life-studies at home. As you may know life drawing is image-making from the human figure in-person drawing form the slight movements of the human body as it says still – something that you and only do from life. So trying to do this from life when you’re stuck at home leave you with the following options, do still lifes, self-portraits from a mirror or you could abduct someone! In my case, I have my fiance, Jonathan, who I abducted a while ago.

For one of first classes at home, I decided to follow Jonathan about and draw him, He was very patient with me, I don’t think I quite made the 6 hours. But, I spent a long time on them, playing about with what to leave out. Not having a fixed time for each pose made me lose track of time.

This a long pose, I’m not sure exactly how long I spent on this painting as I had to set the pose up witch took a long time, I also had to have breaks, but I started at 9;00 and ended at 6;00. So me and Jonathan ended up quite tired!

I miss the life class, I hope it will be up and running next term! Do try to stay safe and happy, Dot.

Drawing Uncategorized

Life Drawing Live

Sometime in February I participated in the BBC’s Life Drawing Live, TV production! It happened to be on a Tuesday which is my usual life drawing day at the school of art, which starts at ten o’clock and goes on till five – but it didn’t end there for me! At the end of my class, I packed up and headed straight for the Arts centre (up a somewhat steep hill). It was quite nerve-racking waiting for the production to start, but after a little glass of wine on the generosity of the Arts Centre, I felt much more at ease.

When the show started we were presented with posses that consisted of three to thirty minutes. I expected the last pose to be much longer, this new layout was challenging, not that I’m complaining, I’m just more familiar with five-minute posses or three hours.

It was also interesting having these BBC tutors that didn’t like styled drawings and was much more interested in you getting the figures completely accurate and lifeless. I think I’ve been very lucky with my tutor Paul Webster who encourages both accuracy and artistic license.

In hindsight this was a good experience for me, I find working from a screen much more difficult than drawing from life, your naked eye picks up more details than a lens. I would recommend drawing from a screen immediately as, I think it makes drawing in the class feel significantly easier!

Also the BBC featured this drawing on their website!