P32 – Research 4B – A Drawing in the Style of Patrick Caulfield

This is the follow up to the research about Patrick Caulfield himself.

“Find out more about Patrick Caulfield and how he uses positive and negative space, for example in his “White Ware” screen prints. Make a drawing in a similar style.”

When I started researching Caulfield, the first picture I pulled up on Wikipedia was “After Lunch”. I liked this when I first saw at the Tate and fancied doing a drawing in this style so I drew the bay window of my living room with sofa and TV.

Bay Window (after Patrick Caulfield)

I added the brown curtains as I noticed that Caulifield often adds a small amount of a second colour such as with “Arita Flask – black”. The main problem with this picture was that I did it in pastels so it was difficult to get the flat areas of colour favoured by Caulfield. I could have tried blending more I suppose but I would have had to do this before adding the black linework.

The second drawing I did was based on his White Ware screenprints. I’ve noticed on some other students blogs that preliminary sketches are also uploaded. Remembering that a friend had once told me that art teachers are not interested so much in the point you get to as the way you got there, I’m including my initial work.

Initial sketches

As well as tying to work in the style of Caulfield, I was also influenced by silhouette drawings found on film posters or pulp paperbacks.

Internet image

I found that my original idea of a simple open door was a little too simple and unsatisfactory. I developed it with a small child holding a teddy, an image familiar to any parent in the middle of the night. However, this was rejected for two reasons. Firstly, Caulfield very rarely featured people in his work. Secondly, if I were comfortable producing a satisfactory drawing of a child with a teddy from my imagination I probably wouldn’t be bothering with this drawing course.

I also considered the strong lighting required for the style to come from a torch or a searchlight, but as yet I have not pursued this.

So looking again at Caulfield’s White Ware prints, I called on the assistance of my ubiquitous stainless steel sugar basin, star of Exercises 8 and 9. I set up a lamp to check on the highlights on the rim of the basin. I’m glad I did this as I found that, in addition, light was reflected from the inside of the basin nearest me onto the inside wall away from me. This allowed me to add more form to the drawing even though it was only in two colours.

I sketched the top of the basin so I could get the highlights in the right places. I then did a sketch of the final idea. Being a photographer, I knew not to put the object in the centre of the composition, so I placed it nearer the top right corner. The final result looked wrong. I realised the “object” was the basin and the shadow which together were now in the centre. For the final sketch I put the basin in the centre so that, with the shadow it was roughly on the intersection of thirds in the bottom left.

I sketched the basin with a 0.8 black fine liner pen, and filled the large areas by painting with indian ink and a brush. I am happy with the final result.

Final Drawing after Patrick Caulfield

I’ve enjoyed studying Patrick Caulfield and his work. I intend doing the Printing 1 course which includes lino printing and other relief methods. I will return to Caulfield as his work is an ideal starting point for this, even though he himself chose to produce it as screenprints.

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