Early illustration of a dandelion  The other day I was trying to get everyone excited about the various ways that research could help deepen an understanding of both the world and possible connections we could make between it and the artworks we make. Because one student's site chosen for developing ideas for artwork, was a small patch of waste ground, I have decided to put together some secondary research relating to that ubiquitous wasteland plant, the common dandelion, a plant that is sometimes regarded as a weed, but which historically has often been a vital source of both food an ..read more

Durer For hundreds of years the image above by Durer has represented an idea of the artist making objective drawings. At the core of the idea is the need to keep your eye steady, in this case by having an adjustable column with a pointed end that is fixed to the drawing table. This fixed point being essential if you are to be able to accurately trace what you can see. In the image above we also have a grid of I presume fine thread, which is stretched across the frame through which the artist looks at the world, a grid that is repeated by the artist drawing another one over the horizontal su ..read more

  The Shadow Gap Every year students and staff debate over the hanging of work. So, before we hit exhibition season some things to consider. Hanging drawings and paintings is about the construction of a very shallow space for thin objects to be experienced within. Central to an understanding of this space, is the fact that physically and perceptually all our earth bound experiential spaces are 'anisotropic'. I.e. these spaces exhibit properties with different values when measured in different directions. For those of us that inhabit a giant physical object such as the planet Earth, t ..read more

Richard Diebenkorn Contemporary landscape drawing as I have pointed out already, often involves artists embedding themselves into the various situations they find themselves in, however the tradition of 'composing' images is still with us and often landscape painters use drawing as a way to collect information that will allow them to go on and make paintings. However some of the images made are not 'studies' but are full-blown statements, made using drawing materials but made with an intensity and understanding of the materials being used, that ensures that the images as as powerful as any ..read more

  Amy Sillman Metabolism is the result of chemical processes that occur within a living organism in order to maintain life. Amy Sillman uses this process as an analogy for both the making and the viewing of her drawings and paintings. Metabolism she has stated, is a process of breaking things down, which could also be a form of abstraction. In a recent essay, Sillman states: "I would call it a metabolism: the intimate and discomforting process of things changing as they go awry, as they look uncomfortable, have to be confronted, repaired, or risked, i.e. trying to fig ..read more

In my recent post on Gwen John I mentioned that it was unfortunate that for many years she was thought of as one of Rodin's models rather than as an artist in her own right. Just a few days later I'm reminded of this by an exhibition that focuses on Rodin's relationship with other women in his life. There is an exhibition on at the Henry Moore Centre in Leeds that is of interest to painting, drawing, sculpture and installation practitioners. Rebecca Fortnum has managed to bring all these practices together into a small one room exhibition that demonstrates how sharply focused research can be u ..read more

Anatomy of a firework The first fireworks were made from what was known as black powder packed into long, narrow bamboo tubes. The resulting boom was thought to scare away evil spirits. Black powder was invented in China over 1000 years ago, and is a type of gunpowder made from 75% potassium nitrate (saltpeter), 15% charcoal and 10% sulphur. In many ways a firework is like a human being. It has a life trajectory, is born, becomes part of a set of social rituals, has a moment in society's collective gaze and it eventually fades into exhaustion and a final death. In the anatomy of a firewor ..read more

An intriguing exhibition has just finished at the Courtauld's Denise Coates Exhibition Galleries. It focused on the period around the 1790s when the artist Fuseli was making private drawings of what were thought of at the time as 'modern women'. What is fascinating about the drawings is the fusion between reality and fantasy. The observed realities of what was then contemporary fashion, especially hair styles, are suffused with his elaborated fantasies and as he draws they become fetishes. These women are powerful and the drawings suggest that Fuseli had anxieties about gender, identity a ..read more

Edmund Burke Feldman developed a model of art criticism that is still used by many people as a way to begin an understanding of individual art works. In fact as students you may recognise several of Feldman's stages of criticism in the advise given to you when you are asked to think and make notes about your relationship with other art. These are Feldman's basic steps: Description: You are asked to make a list of the visual qualities of the work that are obvious and immediately perceived. Once you have exhausted the question; “What do you see in the artwork”? then you are to final ..read more

I have been working as an art educator for nearly 50 years. Today begins another year, and alongside making resolutions and hoping for new experiences, it is perhaps time to reflect again on what I'm doing. It is very easy to become stuck in one's ways and to allow experience to become a stick with which to beat people with, as opposed to it being something that can be drawn upon as an aid for others or as a help for them to make their own decisions when they need to find the best pathway to take. Recently Art21 asked art educators to reflect on what they thought they were doing and I was in p ..read more