Quick sketches around the house.

For this exercise we were asked to grab out sketch book and a soft pencil and make our way around each room in the house making fast visual observations and making four quick sketches from four view points of the room. In this exercise I decided to do sketches of : living room, dining room, kitchen and my bedroom. I didn’t feel like I needed to draw the toilets or my parents room. Below is a pictures of the results:

Living Room.

This room I found interesting to draw as there was a lot of different items and I enjoyed looking closely at the textures and depth of the items instead of glancing at them like I usually do in my daily life. I found it was difficult to scale things down but once I did I liked recreating a miniature version of the sights I was seeing, all in all I liked doing this room as I found it fun to recreate and scale down the furniture and it was more of an easy room to recreate through my drawing.

 

Dining Room.

The dining room was my least favourite and I disliked recreating this room all together, I found that the items were difficult to represent in the angles I was seeing and to make it look realistic was difficult. I wasn’t too impressed with my final outcome of this room and I found it was pretty bland. The chairs were difficult to position in my drawings to look on the right angle. I would not like to work on drawing this room again.

 

Kitchen.

I enjoyed doing the kitchen the same as the living room, I found it was fun to recreate the character of the room and to get to terms again with the layout and texture of the room I go into everyday. The cabinets turned out to be a challenge but I felt like the end result really worked out and the sketches I produced were an accurate viewing of what I was visually seeing when sketching. All in all it was one of my favourite rooms to recreate.

 

Bedroom.

I think that this room was my favourite. Seen as my bedroom is my canvas to create with as I live with my parents I loved really looking into the details and sketching out the room I have picked everything out for. I loved filling in the details and placing things exactly how it was seen in front of me, I think this was the easiest room I had to recreate through sketching.

 

Overview:

This exercise was really fun, I loved recreating the place I live in and looking at things more in depth than usual to sketch it out. I found it helped a lot with coming to terms with quick still life sketches and helped me advance my sketching skills. The room I most enjoyed recreating was my bedroom as it’s personal to me and I had fun creating a miniature version of where I spend most of my time. All in all I found this exercise really helped me advance on my skills and made me think more about how to view and angle my drawings.

Review of project two.

 

For these two exercises I found the materials I used were both successful and I was happy with how well I was able to adapt to using them and learn quickly how to show tone. The one thing I would say was a bit more unsuccessful was figuring out how to place and show the objects and to also get a lighting onto them which showed the different tones and shadows onto them to create an interesting piece.

I think with these piece I did manage to get a good sense of depth and really work at getting an accurate representation of the objects, trying my best to get an accurate scale at the same time. For getting this so accurate I found an aspect that helped was to see the background and to see clearly how it was set out.

I found being restricted to just using lines and tone interesting, seen as I normally have more freedom when drawing I found it different experimenting with new techniques and being restricted to one style. It was a bit more difficult doing things straight from using a non erasable material was difficult because I normally like to map out my drawings before I go fully in with a permanent material.

I found I worked a little differently using colour in my drawings because I couldn’t erase anything out after drawing it, I also found it was different to blend in the colours into each other and it was a different technique to show tone into the drawing but all in all I found it a good exercise to get used to using colours within my work.

Still life in tone using colour.

For this exercise we were asked to draw out objects using a coloured material and then change colours every time the tone on the objects changed. We were told it could take us more than one attempt to get a piece we’re pleased with.

For this piece I chose to line up two containers and draw those out, I decided the best media for me to use was coloured pencils and I did this exercise in 2 pieces using two different colour methods and one I liked better than the other. Below is the pictures of my results:

 

 

I found this exercise interesting to do, I have never used coloured pencils to do tonal work like this before and I found it quite an interesting way of showing tone. I wanted to stick to the same colours but in a different shade or tone therefore it wouldn’t look as messy as using completely different colours. I found I preferred how the first attempt I did turned out, the reds seemed to blend well together and created quite a tonal representation of the objects I was trying to recreate.

For this exercise I used a different style of technique when showing the different tones as well as doing some detail using cross hatching. I found the way I have used the coloured pencils has made the drawing look quite realistic and an accurate presentation of what my view of the objects was.

All in all I am happy with how both of there pieces have turned out although I was more impressed with my first piece due to the colours having more blend-able features and really showing the shadows and tones change throughout the objects. I haven’t really experimented with using colours for using tones before so I found it fun to use this media in my work and I will practice tones with colours more in my spare time.

 

Detail and Tone.

In this exercise we were asked to draw an object either something like a shell or some draft wood (something with textures) we had to use various different tone work and use techniques such as shading, cross hatching and using an eraser to enhance the light tones of the object.

I found this exercise enjoyable to really go to town on making the object I chose look 3D and use multiple methods to enhance the dark and lighter tones, I decided to go with a shell seen as I found it was the most interesting to get different textures and lighting onto the object. Below is a picture of my result:

As shown on the picture I used a lot of cross hatching to really pop out the darker tones on the shell and I used the eraser occasionally to show the light tones on the shell. I enjoyed using the cross hatching to show the dark tones and using that technique throughout this piece I found worked out and was quite effective, I also thought enhancing the lighter tones with the use of an eraser was an effective use and I’ve learnt a lot about how you can show tone through using a pencil.

 

All in all I am happy with the result of this piece and I think the techniques I have used turned out to make the tones look effective throughout this piece. I have learnt a lot about different ways to preform toning and how to create different ways of using and showing tones that I will take on board and use throughout my work.

 

Review of part one:

For this piece I found the best technique for this exercise was the cross hatching- I found this the most effective due to it showing the darkest tones and being buildable to really make some effective tonal work.

– Research on still life.

Historical still life.

For this research point we need to research into traditional approaches to still life and get an idea of the genre we’re entering to learn more about it. For this I did some research first looking into the more traditional and historical artists and how they took approaches onto still life.

Firstly I came across an artist called Evaristo Baschenis with his piece of work called ‘Still-life with Musical Instruments and a Statuette’ this was done with oil on canvas in 1660. This piece was done with dull lighting and a realistic take on the image in front of the artist. Seeing this artist has shown me that in the 1600’s the representation of still life was realistic and shown exactly how shown when viewing.

In the image above you can see the accurate representation of the lighting, it shows the tone and colours changing matching the lighting entering the image. Seeing this artist’s work and looking into various different types of work in these era’s, I found that historical artists did more realistic representations of the layout ahead of them, the work they did was accurate in the lighting and the toning on the objects. The colours used are more dark toned and the lighting is done which is a common feature of still life in this century for it to be dark with little lighting.

 

I then came across an artist called Paul Cézanne, the piece I came across was called Still-life with Bowl of Fruit done with oil pastels on canvas this piece was done in 1893. This piece of work shows off how it was shown back in the 1800’s for still life and how the representation of the style was.

As shown in the image above the still life form was more traditional as in it was done to accuracy and done as a realistic representation of the image the artist would see. The imagery is bright and coloured with more primary colours than the previous artist I came across in the 1600’s, the work seems less realistic but still has the accurate toning and contrast on the objects. The lighting in this picture is more bright and the full image has more lighting than the previous, the toning and dark tones are only in the areas of shadows.

Contemporary still-life.

Finding a more contemporary famous still life artist was more complicated therefore I went on google and did my research throughout that platform, when doing this research I found that all types of contemporary art were so much different to the past centuries, modern still life art is more bright and different, artists have had a new way of seeing this type of art and changing it’s view, it doesn’t have to be an accurate representation of what you see it can be formed into whatever you imagine. Different media’s are used and new technique’s.

With this image by Laurie Justus Pace called ‘Early Morning Tea’ it shows the brightness and different techniques contemporary artists use and get inspired by. For this piece of art I found it fun and it still represented the items the artist was looking at when creating this art. I think that the techniques in her use of the brush really show the different style to the previous decades.

The materials we use today on our art are different, the way we express are is more imaginative and we use colour to light up an image and show an object for a different way than it really is, in the 1600’s they would express art through realistic form and create art to look real. But as decades went on we now explore art in different ways, the colours we use, the lighting we use the techniques within our materials are new. We show things for what they are but use different ways to express our sights. We use different materials and use them in different techniques to create expression, the composition hasn’t changed much, we still line objects up and create different ways to place them yet we change the way we represent things.

Shadows and reflected light.

For this exercise we were asked to place to ceramic objects on a surface with light sighting onto it, once we’d done this we’d have to draw them both clearly showing the lighting (shadows) using a charcoal stick.

For this task I decided to use charcoal as it has worked well for smudging and toning in my previous exercises and I felt most comfortable using this material. I did find this task more challenging as we had to clearly show blocks of shadow and I’m not used to doing gradual toning from where the lights change.

Below is a picture of my outcome:

This piece I wasn’t my best work I did find it complicated to show such big blocks of colour of the shadows and not be able to fully tone the objects but it was a good exercise to get used to how lighting works onto objects and how it’s different all the way around. I have learnt how different lighting works with different textures and how shadows and lighting focus on different spots and not just the same spots. It was an interesting exercise to do yet I’m not completely happy with my outcome, I do think it’s a clear indication of the task but I feel like I wasn’t in my best element for this task and wasn’t used to the type of drawing. Yet I am happy with experimenting and finding out how lighting does affect drawing with different textures and how shadows do form.

All in all this exercise was complicated in coming out of my comforts own yet I have learn a lot about drawing and how lighting works that will be handy to add to my drawing skills.