Blog of the week: Jenna's drawings

Sarah West, reports on one of her students, Jenna.
When assessing Jenna’s works what first struck me was her consistency across all of the exercises, her learning log and the assignment pieces. She has thoughtfully worked through the whole of Assignment one with precision and enthusiasm. She has produced a lot of works to a high level, especially at this entry stage of the course. Jenna’s work is confident, inquisitive and has a personal style.

Jenna produced thorough and intricate investigation sheets on all the ‘Mark Making’ exercises. The variation of the ways that she produced line, shade and marks seemed inexhaustible. She worked logically through the course book and was able to achieve the desired outcome of applying these investigations into practice into her new works.

‘Supermarket Shop’ is of an exceptionally high quality at this entry level. Jenna has arranged an interesting composition with a couple of the items tippling over, the colours are precise, the shading is complex and the detail exquisite. The detail, especially within the pasta shells, you’ll see, is very good. The stand out feature is her control of the medium; She is aware of the handling and what type of pressure to apply when trying to attain a certain look, e.g. in the fiercely hard red of the spoon and surrounding area on the cardboard packet contrasted with the organic and shiny surface of the pepper. She has commented in her blog that she was particularly pleased with how she managed to execute this herself.
Her Experimenting with Texture is exactly that! Jenna has continuously experimented and produced versatile, confident and engaging pages. Her colour palette within these is well attuned with the surfaces she is visually describing.

Throughout Assignment One Jenna has been focused; she has applied all the learning from the exercises to her working process and her final two pieces. Both Natural and Man-made objects have been analysed and deconstructed whilst studying form, shape, light and texture. Jenna constructed and drew a selection of compositions which she worked and re-worked, to choose from whilst studying the objects in a variety of media.

In Jenna’s studies for ‘Natural Objects’, her process of visual analysis is apparent when testing out the most suitable media for her pinecone; on this sheet she goes into depth, studying the forms and how to best represent them. This reference and research sheet is an invaluable tool to prepare for a drawing and she has made full use of it in this instance.

Jenna had not previously to this course used charcoal. She made several studies using charcoal during the drawing and mark making exercises which concluded with her Man- made objects of 2 cameras, a camera case and some negative film. In her studies she pull apart the details of the objects, almost like an exploded drawing, to evidently get to grips with their individual qualities and details. It is an interesting composition and subject matter which she has articulated well. There is a sense of depth and light and shade with a specific softness in the case. Jenna’s attention to detail is ever present here too.

Jenna’s Leaning Blog is extensive and is inclusive of all the required information and work, it is also very well presented and clear. She has a good mixture of explanation, reflection (especially to the points asked in the course) and context.
It is evident that Jenna has been keeping it throughout the course; this is a great practice which will help her studies throughout the course as a vital reflective tool for her research and work.
Jenna’s blog; www.jenna511068.blogspot.co.uk