The Value of a Value study: Greyscale!

I know, you're going to yab me about the title. Hey, I never said I was super witty or something, lol. Btw, shout out to GRR Martin for the Game of Thrones "Greyscale" call-out (write faster dude!)

What's a value study? Well, it's something I don't see a lot of artists in these parts do, but it is CRUCIAL. VITAL. IMPORTANT. Any other word I can capitalise, so you get the idea that you should grab a pen and paper and take notes.

So, value studies are important, because they teach you how to represent things 3-dimensionally (really important for Representational Artists), otherwise it looks flat. It shows you how light and shade affects an object and shows its form. It can be used as a powerful tool for Design and Composition. It is hard to see properly when drawing from a picture, because most cameras, even the expensive ones, compress values, and then your drawings/paintings always look flat (cough Pencil artists in Nigeria cough).

Most people are very familiar with 3 shades: Light, Medium and Dark. As a professional, you should be able to identify Values to upto to 10 shades (yup). Here's a tonal bar to start you on your way (make yours btw).

courtesy Atelier Atlanta

And here is one of the most important exercises you should do: grab a white object, a ball, a container or anything. Take a lamp and light it from one direction. Draw/paint what you see. Repeat. Repeat till you start seeing tones everywhere. Here's mine:

value sketch of a container, pastel on paper

This exercise is important and you can and should use any medium. Here are more examples.

David Lobenberg, watercolour value sketch

Twi, value study

Jaime Treadwell, oil

David Ebben, cast painting, oil

 You can use any colour, as long as it is a monochromatic painting/drawing (y'all know what Monochromatic is, bah?). Btw, I arranged my pastels like that, to further teach me how to strengthen my value work.

My pastels in colour

same pastels, just shot them in black and white

You can see that, in black and white, they read like a Tonal bar. Neat, huh?

Well, go explore, my lovelies! Happy Painting season!

Art Exhibition: Hybrid Theory

Hello lovelies.

Sorry I've been away, having issues getting back into my blog.

I attended the above-mentioned art exhibition at Signature Gallery and it was amazing: a mixed media combination of acrylic, pastel, charcoal and conte, the works were all about the Sciences. It was really nice and everyone was buzzing about it. Here are some pictures from opening night.

artist Kelani Abas with a guest

the two artists exhibiting: Uthman Wahab and Soji Adesina

I'll do a more extensive review of what I saw, soon. Promise!

Till next time.

Art Exhibition: "HYBRID THEORY" by Adesoji Adesina and Uthman Wahaab

Hey there, blog readers!

How has your week been? What's up with all the traffic in Lagos nowadays?? OhMyFreakingGoodness! Luckily, this has given ,e time to practise for gesture drawing, so it's not all that bad.

I wanted to annouce an art exhibition, by one of my colleagues, Uthman Wahab. He's exhibiting with another artist.

Here's the official blurb for it.

Signature-Beyond Gallery presents "Hybrid Theory", an exhibition of a body of work by artists Adesoji Adesina and Uthman Wahaab.

Opening: Thursday 25th September. 7 pm - 9 pm.

Viewing: Thursday 25th - Friday 10th October. 9 am - 6pm.
Gallery also opens on Sundays from 12noon - 6 pm.

I've seen some of the paintings and if you love Sci-fi, Drawing, Linkin Park and mixed media, this one's for you! Admission is totally free btw, so just dress presentable.

See you there!

The Art of the Conté Drawing

Hello m'lovies.

How have you been? I'm going to start a  products review series of posts, as I think it's important we know what we use. Knowledge is power, or so I've been told (lol).

Conté is a type of drawing chalk, packaged in France in the 1700s by a man called Joseph Conte but artists have been using it since the time of the Renaissance (Michaelangelo, Da Vinci and co all used it to draw). For me, it's a lot better than a Graphite pencil, it has nice colours and is smooth to use. They are a lot like pastels but harder and because the name "Conté" is trademarked.a lot of companies call them "compressed pastel". It has just gotten popular here in Nigeria though.

Thomas Wilmer Dewing, before 1926

Michaelangelo, 1550s

Susan Lyon, 2014

I reviewed a few brands I got recently in Lagos. They are the General's compressed pastel sticks, Conté a Paris (the original brand) and Rembrandt Carre Crayons.

swatches of the colours and brands I have

From top to bottom: Rembrandt, Conte a Paris and General's

I did these quick studies of paintings, to show you what they could do. Nice, no?

Finally, here is my own original work, I spotted this dignified elderly gentleman at National Arts Theatre and insisted on doing a drawing of him, using red Conté.

I really like them and I would urge you to try them out, and you can also mix them with charcoal too. So go have fun!

Magdalene Odundo

For some strange reason, Nigerian Art schools look down on ceramics and call them "artisans" rather than artists. Which is really sad, as it's part of our History. So I keep looking for quality terracotta work and keep finding cheap stuff.

Then I discovered Kenyan Magdalene. A. N. Odundo.

Notice now the protrusions on this vase look like a spinal cord. Kai! This lady has a strong faithful fan in me. Most of her pottery follow curves of a human body.

Madgalene (I love her name!) was born in Nairobi and received her early education in both India and Kenya. She moved to England in 1971 to continue her training in graphic art. In 1974-1975, she visited Nigeria and Kenya to study traditional hand-built pottery techniques. She also traveled to New Mexico to observe the making of blackware vessels.

She's an OBE of the British Empire and Magdalene should be an inspiration to any female artist, especially those who want to be pottery sculptors: You are artists, finished. No less.

What's in a stick of charcoal, really?

I am so, so sorry for disappearing on y'all. So much has happened since we last talked, and I will be sharing it with you from now on.

Blogging is hard work. Almost as hard as Astro Nuclear Physics. Truly. You've never read up on it, so don't argue with me. I've never read up on it either.

Sooooo.....

Charcoal. Wonderful to cook Jollof rice on. Excellent to grill Suya to the right taste level. Even better to draw with.

KwangHo Shin

Alex Tzavaras

Kelvin Okafor

Kathe Kollwitz

These are lovely examples of the beauty and flow and life of charcoal (seriously I prefer them to most oil paintings). I got some recently and decided to put them to the test.

Inscribe charcoal sticks and some random Chinese set

 

 

 

 

 

 

Derwent charcoal pencils

I got the Inscribe set and Derwent pencils from AB Artworld and the Chinese sticks from some art store, all stores are located in Ojuelegba.

I have shown how dark each gets, and how soft each brand is. IMHO, none is bad (THAT IS THE BEAUTY OF CHARCOAL, PEOPLE!), they just make different marks, it's upto you to use it as you feel. I will say that pencils give you more control when drawing and are less messy but sticks give you that wonderful flow of movement.

Now, if you will all excuse me, I'll go back to cooking jollof, errrr.....I mean drawing, with Charcoal.

Laters.

Africans in Western Art

Hello everyone,

Sorry I haven't been posting for a while, working on a lot of stuff is no excuse to neglect my blog.

Did you know Africans were always painted in Western Art? Of course you didn't, neither did I. But this is very true, so many popular artists from the 16th century painted them, including Rembrandt and Carracci. Some of the Africans painted were educated, belonging-to-the-elite Africans (like the powerful Medici family, who had mixed race members who ruled states in Italy and Spain and contributed to most of the currently ruling European acristocracy) to well....slaves and "savages from the new world".