"Reach" - Class October 11th


The word for this week is "reach." This made me want to incorporate something three-dimensional into the drawing and so I used black and yellow sculpey (quick drying clay) and then scraped some of it off (that's what the black and yellow marks on the drawing are). I used colored pencil (my favorite medium for the past few months since the summer) around the markings from the clay.

The drawing is an attempt to depict this unexpectedly beautiful manzanita and oak forest that I passed through on my backpacking trip this summer on the way into Lancaster in Southern California. It was around 4:30 in the afternoon when we got to this point. It had been uncomfortably hot in the previous days but that day was in the high 80s and there was a cool breeze. It was unexpected after passing through some terribly burned areas in the Angeles National Forest. We walked a total of 26 miles from the San Gabriel mountains into the western edge of Lancaster (in the Mojave desert) that day.

Hills just south of Lancaster (Mojave desert), California (Image 1, June 2016)

 Hills just south of Lancaster (Mojave desert), California (Image 2, June 2016)

Hills just south of Lancaster (Mojave desert), California (Image 3, June 2016)

The drawing is also an attempt to incorporate some elements from the paintings that we looked at from Alfred Wallis (the early twentieth century British fisherman and painter) this week. After looking at Wallis's paintings I wanted to explore what lack of perspective would look like and also to make the trees look more like patterns against the hills like his ships looked like in the Cornish harbor. It was fun to experiment with with these things (although I'm not thrilled with the final result) and I'm glad that I know his work now.

Alfred Wallis 

Comments

  1. Kenny MeyerOctober 9, 2016 at 1:21 PM

    Very creative! I think you've caught something about the burn zone. It's an odd disturbing beauty. Please keep posting.

    ReplyDelete
  2. rebeccaOctober 11, 2016 at 2:54 PM

    Thanks Kenny, I appreciate the feedback!

    ReplyDelete

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