Part Two: Project Three: Exercises 1 & 2

Exercise 1: Still life group using line

Once again, I called on my trusty pot pourri pot in order to acquire some interesting pieces for this exercise.  As well as the strange, spherical objects in the centre and the sprig of something protruding backwards, I used a smooth pebble, dried leaf (from a previous exercise – its still going strong), a flaky twig, a bare grape vine, a walnut.  It didn’t take much shuffling of the objects before I had settled on a composition that I felt worked, despite having a rather long twig that seemed to expand the view more than I ideally wanted.

Using an Edding 1800 Profipen black 0.5mm fineliner, and the photograph of student work in the coursebook as guidance, I set about roughing in the outlines of my objects.  My first attempt saw me accidentally misplace the outline of the sprig of pot pourri, but as I am in the habit of leaving my mistakes in place now, I simply carried on.  Another of my trusty resources – my dining room table (the only place that seems sacred enough that my children wont touch) – is the setting, with the light coming from the top-left.  Shadows here were very strong due to artificial light, and I laid these in first in order to anchor my objects and give me a place to start.

I worked quickly, flicking my eyes rapidly between the paper and the objects.  I also tried not to take my pen off of the paper too much, to increase the fluidity and spontaneity  of the piece.  The darkest areas of colour – those of the twig and the underside of the leaf – were suggested by laying lines closely together, creating an optical illusion of dense, opaque colour.  The walnut’s brain-like texture saw me using small, squiggly marks, the crunchy leaf was built from jagged, inconsistent strokes and the smoothness of the pebble was alluded to by long, careful lines curving around its edges.

I am pleased with the choice of medium here; I was able to apply the softest touch for the lighter objects, and more pressure for the heavily textured ones.  I feel each of the objects are easily recognisable from each other as their textures and forms are all very different.  Perhaps the one thing I should have done here is spent more time looking at various other viewpoints and compositions.  At first glance this one seemed perfect, but in hindsight I am not completely satisfied with how the twig leads the eye too far away from the composition and out of the right-hand side of the paper.

Exercise 2: Still life group in tone

I was a little confused as to whether I should use the same objects from the previous exercise here, or others from my ‘stash’ of found objects.  Due to the horrendous weather of late and three kids not thrilled with the idea of traipsing around in the cold and wet, I resorted to choosing from objects in my kitchen.  More specifically, my fridge.  I found half a red pepper, half a red onion, some satsumas and a red/green apple.  Although the exercise calls for just three colours, and possibly unrelated ones at that, I was drawn to the groups’ jewel-like hues and wondered if I could still possibly convey this with my limited palette.

I arranged the objects – yes, on the ever-reliable dining table (I will get round to setting up another still life area soon…) – and moved them around eachother, taking pieces off and peeling them, then moving them some more, before settling on a composition I felt worked.  Using a black ball-point pen, I started by rapidly drawing the outlines, and then added the shadows first before working in the other tones.  I have to say, as much as I was against composition studies before the course, believing them to be too time-intensive, I really do enjoy them now.  These in particular were a joy to do, as the objects had such a variety of patterns and a wonderful depth of tones.  Composition No. 3 became another composition with a different orientation (No. 5).  I just thought this particular one could work both ways.  This process helped establish areas of dark, mid and light tone, which I hoped would make it easier when it came to using just three colours.  Once I was happy I had gathered enough ideas, I limited myself to a few different colour schemes (so as to make it easier to decide), purposefully choosing colours that were harmonious or complementary.

I finally decided on the purple, yellow ochre and lemon yellow complementary scheme, hoping my knowledge of colour theory could be successfully applied here.  I set up my piece of A3 cartridge paper ready to jump in with coloured pencils, but wasn’t sure if I was to block in the areas that different tones created, or draw a rough outline of the objects.  In the end, it actually turned into a bit of both.  I used the eyes half-closed method throughout the first pass of the three colours, to ascertain similar groups of tone.  This was tougher than I had originally thought it would be, especially when it came to deciding if something should be purple or yellow ochre.

Once I had rapidly filled the composition with the three areas of tone, it was time to revisit it once more with more interesting marks and shading.  I deliberately used the pencils to recreate certain textures i.e. short, sharp and bold lines for the onion skin, and pressurised ‘scuffs’ to recreate the orange peel dimples.  In the past, I have more often than not used cross-hatching to lay in shadows but this time I decided on something different – a continuous, circular squiggle.  I remembered the word ‘spontaneous’ being mentioned in the coursebook, and tried to keep this in mind as I worked around the composition.

As I worked, I was conscious of the fact that was a LOT of purple.  I had paid what I though was a great deal of close attention to the tones and wondered why so much of it was purple.  The shadows really were that dark, with the artificial light coming from the top-left, however they seemed to be taking over slightly.  I persevered, trying not to talk myself into giving up and starting again.  At one point I wondered if I should introduce a more indigo-blue colour to break up some of the purple in the shadows, but my conscience told me this would be cheating (having more than three colours) so I let that idea go.

In hindsight, I’d probably have gone for an indigo-blue instead of the purple chose, as it is far too rich and has a pink undertone that clashes somewhat with the orange-yellow tones.  Overall, I am very happy with the extreme viewpoint – which I’m sure to be well-known for soon, looking back at other work – and found the exercise extremely liberating and rather enjoyable, despite the restrictions.  The photo of the final piece was taken in natural light, and is therefore a little on the bright side…

Conclusion

Check and Log

Which aspects of each drawing have been successful, and what did you have problems with?

For the line drawing, the most successful aspect was the suggestion of texture with the fineliner; I was happy that I managed to get so many textures and tones from just one pen.  In the tone drawing, I feel the composition steals the show, especially the satsuma that leads into the composition at the bottom right.

Did you manage to get a sense of depth in your drawings?  What elements of the drawings and still life groupings helped to create that sense?

I’m not convinced I created a lot of depth with my line drawing.  There appears to be no real setting for the objects, however they are place right on the edge of my table and the further edge was not visible to include it.  Therefore, the objects seem to just be floating and don’t have a sense of occupying space, and the objects at the front seem to ‘break’ the composition apart.  For the tone drawing, the satsuma helps to ascertain the depth of the composition in relation to the apple at the back, and the fact the objects are overlapped also adds to this, making it more successful than my line drawing.

What difficulties were created by being restricted to line or tone?

In the line drawing, not being able to add tone in any way other than line was quite tough, although I found my way around this by using hatching.  As I used just one thickness of fineliner, all objects had lines of the same thickness despite having different textures; if tone or colour were used, I feel I could have depicted the differences more accurately.  In the ton drawing, I found it very difficult to decide which areas were mid and dark tones.  At times it was easy to get caught up in using gradients of the same colour by applying different pressures, from dark to light, and forgetting to use a different colour entirely!  I feel it was a little hit-and-miss with my colour choice as one is almost always uncertain of the outcome, hence the purple has become a little too dominant for my liking.