WIP - Graphite Artifact - "The Diagnosis Tree"

berien (60) in abstact • 6 years ago (edited)

Hello everybody, with a new Graphite Artifact !

After a few weeks working on this one, its starting to be worth a post.

It was started on a MDF fiberboard that I decided to tint before working on it. It's a bit larger than what I'm used to (70/75cm)

Usually I add tints after drawing. This time, though, I wanted to experiment on a colored support. I prepared it with a protective layer of Gesso, and then washed it with an ocre pigment.

I discovered during work that my eraser was erasing both graphite and tint... Which could give some interesting effects in the lightest spots if I don't screw up :D

Graphite drawing started during last december and stalled a while at its first stage... I didn't really know where this was leading, and didn't quite like what I was seeing.

Here's a short slideshow of differents stages. I used the same global ambience than my previous video. I think I'll stick on this base with my Graphite Artifacts videos, with some slight adjustments :)

I had to let the drawing build itself during a while before finding something interesting. After it was rotated upside-down, its shape reminded me these naive trees I was drawing when I was a child.

A naive global form, like any situation seen from outside, with complex content, when you start to deal with its problems.

That gave me the title : "The Diagnosis Tree"

That's a special tree species, growing hidden in dense forest full of common "we-just-need-to" and "it's-just-a-matter-of" kinds. I'm pretty sure anyone who's used to solve problems already know these places.

The work is still going on, and will probably last for long :)

That all for now, thanks for reading, for watching, and take care !

See you soon,

Berien.

Posted from my blog with SteemPress : https://berien.com/graphite/wip-graphite-artifact-the-diagnosis-tree/

abstact abstract sketch steempress surreal

6 years ago by berien (60)

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hary25 (50) · 5 years ago

Your work is beautiful as awesome 😍

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berien (60) · 5 years ago

Thank you @hary25 :) Appreciated :)

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hary25 (50) · 5 years ago

Welcome 😊

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sweettais (70) · 6 years ago

Amazing details! Great job!

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berien (60) · 6 years ago

Thanks a lot @sweettais :)

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scrawly (66) · 6 years ago

The old look of this drawing is really lovely. It looks like a steampunk machine blueprint design, and the circular flow that you created here looks very elegant and graceful. Lovely art Berien :).

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berien (60) · 6 years ago

Thanks @scrawly !
Glad you like it ;)

I too like to think of these drawings as some weird blueprints, picked in imaginary lands during imaginary travels :D

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c-squared (60) · 6 years ago

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veryspider (68) · 6 years ago

Love this, Pascal <3 I really like how organic your arting process seems to be :) You do a thing, and then you discover something about your own process doing the thing and then that leads to another thing :D This discovery with the eraser, I am curious if you'd be able to bring it into a method for generating a new and interesting effect ! <3

Also I love how you came up with the name for the piece :) Diagnosis tree, indeed ! How lovely :D It does look like a tree, now that I've read the post and looked at it well, but to be honest, when I just saw the picture without reading your post, I thought it was a mechanical brain with the spine coming downwards...

... Maybe the brain is a diagnosis tree???? :thinking emoji:

...........

SO COOL * ___ *

I love it, love it ! <3

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berien (60) · 6 years ago

Thank you Liske :)

I think you nailed it about the brain :D

During a while I had thought it would become some skull seen from the side, but I wanted to find something more subtle than "the mechanical thinking machine seen for a side" :D

About the eraser, to be honest, nothing really special : I just use it as if it was a white pen, drawing above dark areas, instead of using it as a correcting tool :)

The fact it erases the tint can reinforce the light effect by contrasting both against darkness and background color.

That could be a problem in soft distant lighting, but - I guess - can also give some striking 3D effect on foreground.

I still have to learn a lot in this area :)

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nyarlathotep (62) · 6 years ago

Great sketch, so complex in its details and the use of the "magic" eraser gives a nice effect. Initailly, tbh, I was drawn by the title: "Diagnosis Tree" is a term that is used in Medicine, for automated diagnosis supplied by machine learning algorithms. I messed with this sh*t some years ago when trying to figure out my MSc Dissertation, and abandoned it because it had a much larger scope than I intended.

Medical terms are always fascinating :)

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berien (60) · 6 years ago (edited)

Thanks a lot @nyarlathotep !
Using the term too in other technical fields, when solving issues with pre-established processes 😊
I guess these trees grow their branches everywhere a problem has to be analyzed 😊

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adamada (63) · 6 years ago

I see the fibonacci sequence happening and it's beautiful! I wish I know how to make use of graphite like that. it's those tiny details in lighting effects that I'm so bad at doing. I know you spent years building that skill up and it's really worth the effort seeing this WIP right now. :D

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berien (60) · 6 years ago (edited)

Thanks @adamada :)

To be honest, a bunch of the tiny details are pure random, induced by the support texture and defects, which are just waiting to be used :)

But when a bit of control is needed, eraser must be considered as a white drawing pen :

darken an area with graphite
draw patterns and shape with eraser above this area
blur/soften with finger or a stump if you don't want too much range between light and dark. (the larger "distance" between white and black is reserved for the most important and obvious items of the drawing)
refine the contours if needed with your pen. Ironically, in that case, the pen is here to erase the white imprecision of your eraser :D
You'll probably have to rinse and reapeat until it's dark enough compared to the rest of the drawing.

That balance is less an active skill consequence than the fruit of long passive observation periods.

That some thinking inversion to get used to :)

Oh ! and finally, the support has its job to do in the party : the rigid wooden surface gives the graphite very different behaviours compared to paper.

I'm not sure my "skills" would be so obvious if I was trying the same on good old paper (actually I'd propably pierce it quickly under the pen or eraser... I've became a bit brutal after so much time spent at working on hard support :D )

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steem-plus (73) · 6 years ago

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