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Coombe Magna - The Open College of the Arts

To find out more details about the transfer to The Open University see A New Chapter for OCA.

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Coombe Magna

Some readers of this blog may remember that I blogged about Michael Coombes when he first started his Drawing 1 course. As he now moves towards the course completion I thought it would be useful and interesting to catch up with him again.
Open Access cuts both ways. Anyone can begin a journey with OCA; it is up to the individual to make an assessment of their potential and levels 0 and 1 give students a chance to see whether HE study might be for them. Some come having hardly any making skills whereas others, like Michael, come with considerable skills. Skill in that sense (facility with materials, a good eye for spatial relationships) is only a small percentage of the marks awarded for our visual art courses though, even at Level 1.
Michael has taken to this drawing 1 course like a duck to water and has experimented with frottage and gesture in sophisticated but wholehearted ways when he could just as easily have rested on his laurels maybe, or at least there was a risk of that. His frottage is so subtle and well placed that I am not sure if you will be able to spot it in these drawings! What is evident though, is a much more playful, clever, experimental and sensitive use of gesture and markmaking, which has opened up his drawings and made them much more multi layered. Enjoy.
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Posted by author: Emma Drye

5 thoughts on “Coombe Magna

  • Stunning work. Very atmospheric, and so inventive in mark making and technique. Inspirational.
    Doris

  • Beautiful drawings, they really work well together as a series. The use of footage is subtle yet effective like Emma says.
    I’d like to know if these where made as part of the landscape section, part 3 in drawing skills or as part of the final assignment, part 5?

    • Thanks for the comments, they were for the Project Landscape drawing and the exercise 360 studies, I had made the fifteen- minute studies and decided to make larger drawings. It may be more clearer if you look up my blog mikechampioncoombesWordpress.com

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