Project 7: Townscape with Buildings and Figures

Different areas in Manchester City Centre.

Manchester Exchange Square was totally rebuilt in 1996 after the RIA bomb attacks; pubs were dismantled and re assembled in different positions. Around the Exchange Square you will find The Shambless pub, a new entrance to the Arndale Centre, Urbis, The Print Works, The Manchester Wheel, The Triangle Shopping Centre and the large outdoor TV screen. Market Street is a pedestrian zone bustling with shoppers which includes the Food Court, Arndale Centre and loads of shops on one main stretch which runs from Piccadilly Gardens to St. Ann’s Square. Piccadilly Gardens was transformed in 2002 it’s no longer a green open space area filled with homeless drunks drinking cider. If it wasn’t for the buildings surrounding the area unfortunately you would not be able to recognize it compared against Lowry’s Piccadilly Gardens (1954).

If you didn’t know Manchester or even if you do you couldn’t name all the squares and little areas with their own name in the city centre they all just roll into one its hard the distinguish where one starts and the other one begins. Other squares around Manchester are Albert Square, St Peter's Square, St Ann's Square, Motor Street Square, Catalan Square, Stephenson Square, Cathedral Gardens, Parsonage Gardens, Shambles Square, Crown Square and Great Northern Square even I don’t know a few of these.

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Barton Arcades, St Anns Square.

This study is the entrance of Barton Arcades looking from St Anne’s Square in the city centre of Manchester. Barton Arcade is a Victoria building which has 3 tiers with a glass roof, the building is a grade II listed historic building. I have worked from photograph number which I took whilst in Manchester. I think the reason I did it was the one point perspective, I have used Conte Crayons I purchased a small box of four a while ago for a couple of quid as I wanted to see the difference between these and soft pastels but never got round to using them. All four colours have been used in this study, Black, White, Bistre and Sanguine on cartridge paper.

I like the feel of them how you can blend them like pastels but they are a lot harder. They also tend to stay on the paper better when you use fixative, when I use pastels with fixative the white and all the light colours tend to disappear and you have to re add them without fixative at the end. I didn’t draw an under drawing I just went for it and it took an hour or so to complete. Over all I like the Conte Crayons and will be investing into a 48 set rather than using pastels, the study isn’t brilliant but I can recognize where the study was from.

Looking towards the top of Exchange Square. A study of the Manchester Exchange area is another study I used the Conte Crayons with but as my palette was very limited I had to add a couple of greens and a blue soft pastel into the creation. This time I have used some pastel paper which has more tooth then the cartridge paper of the previous study, the paper is also a bluey grey colour which I left for blank for the colour of the sky.

I thought it would benefit added a light source as there wasn’t much of one on the photograph. The tree I enjoyed doing it really stands out amongst the browns of the buildings. In the picture you see both new additions with the old buildings to the Manchester skyline. I have immensely enjoyed using Conte Crayons and like I said before will be buying more than just the four colours I have, but overall I don’t think I’ve done too badly for limited palette.

 Printworks, Exchange Square. This is the finished drawing, a few things need to be looked at again and the placement of the people I’m not too happy with. The rest of it I can sort out when I use pastel or whatever medium I end up doing it in. I might just leave it as it is if I don’t get much further with it today, I really need to get on with the finished image and I don’t think this is going to be one I will be using. At the end of the day I can come back to this image and work with it another time if I feel the need to do so, but I must fix the charcoal before it all smudges.

Project 7: Townscape with Buildings and Figures

I have printed out some of the characters that I managed to take with my camera, these people stand out and might be included in the final image. In Lowry’s painting The Cripples from 1949 there are a number of identifiable Manchester characters in the painting including one known as “Johnny on the Boards”. Some of the figures are homeless, workers, shoppers, street entertainers, beggers looking through all the images there were more elderly people then I expected. As the images were taken during in the week and not weekend they won’t be as many teenagers and children of school age, this isn’t a factor I took into consideration when I was choosing the best days to go down. Some of the charactors are below:

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People of Manchester

Happy Homeless Guy
There was this one character in Manchester which stood out for me which can be seen below:

There was this street entertainer playing some sort of instrument and from out of nowhere this guy started dancing and waving his hands in the air. It just reminded me of the Manchester Happy Monday’s era; the guy looked stoned and was really happy. He was properly one of the nicest could have come across, I would like to refer to him as the happy hobo. In the quick watercolour painting below I didn’t get the characteristics of the man so I did a portrait of him with pencils which shows more of the features I wanted to show in the first place. I’ve never done a portrait before it needs a lot of more work and a few things are wrong but as this project isn’t about portraits I will finish the drawing off another day when I have some spare time on my hands.

 A quick small Watercolour Sketch which didn't show how happy he really was.

I did a pencil portrait of the guy which turned out a lot better, as this was my first portrait it didn’t go to bad but I can see a lot of mistakes which need refining which I will do another day. Please double click the image for a larger picture.

Below are some more characters from Manchester City Centre, these were done in Acrylic on Acrylic paper The first seems to be a homeless guy, you don’t see as many homeless people in Manchester as you use to do during the day. I’ve included backgrounds which you would see in Manchester, a standard black cab and a back of a bus. All the homeless drunks use to all congregate in Piccadilly Gardens before they decided to redesign that area. The second image is a sight you see in the centre of Manchester nearly on every corner which is people giving out free copies of the Manchester Evening News which is a daily local paper. For the background I’ve included a rough painting of a tram which was also in the original photograph. I’m going to have a look at a couple of more characters and then get back to looking at Manchester buildings. 

 

 

The below image sticks out for me because he was playing pans and buckets as his instruments, I can’t remember what the music sounded like but he seems happy enough. This image was produced in around 20 minutes; the mediums I have used are Conte Crayons and Pastel Pencils just for a change. Dont forget for a larger picture of the drawing please click the image again once it has loaded (IE)

Project 5: Explosion of Colour

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Out of the photographs I took when I was at Conwy Castle the one below was the first one tha I really liked and wanted to have a look at.

 

This is a quick sketch of the above photographs; I have changed a few things and will probably change a few more once I start using medium. I have not tried to be as accurate as possibly I just want to get an overall feeling.

The sketch only took 5 minutes to do and it will do for what I want. There are houses in the background I decided to bring them forward so you actually see them.

 

Next I tried Carres Conte Crayons; don’t know why they called them crayons there just a harder version of the soft pastels.

I’ve tried using watercolour, I’ve used it very strong to try and get saturated colours rather than the wishy washy feeling you normally associate with watercolours. I have also removed the two rowing boats from the beach as I felt it wasn’t adding anything to the overall composition. I’m surprised how vivid the colours can get but the medium isn’t for me. I’ve also added a Welsh flag on to one of the boats so the viewers have an idea where it is.

 This was created using Derwents Inktense Blocks with a bit of white Gouache thrown in for good measure.

Project 4: Building Study

The below images are of Manchester the top one is of Barton Arcades and the one below is looking at the Manchester Wheel. I have used Conte Crayons for the medium; on the bottom one I have also used a few shades of green pastels for the leaves of the tree because I only have four colours in the Conte Crayons. This is the first time that I have used Conte Crayons so I only bought a small box which cost a couple of quid, they’re similar to pastels but are not as chalky and stay on the page easier. For the Manchester Wheel drawing I have used a coloured pastel paper which I have left untouched for the sky.

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