When I saw that the first assignments were to be done on A2/A1 paper I felt nervous. Never having used such a large size paper before was awe inspiring. However, I began to consider, as I carried on working, that the aim of this is to ensure a looser style of drawing with not too much detail -especially as the handbook said that two hours should be enough time to complete the work. or thereabouts. And I noticed that the next part of the course suggested the use of more detail on A3 paper.
Anyway to accustom myself to this size I did many of the exercises prior to the assignment on A2 and found that I enjoyed using it. I haven't yet tried A1 but this is to do with the sheer logistics of it.
For the composition of man made objects I spent a lot of time thinking about it. Initially I was going to draw my tennis equipment as I love these items. (Strange to some people, I'm sure). However I became less enthusiastic about this after a few sketches and carried on deliberating. My next idea was to draw bottles. This came about because I enjoyed looking for the reflections on earlier exercises and thought it would be a challenge, but after a few sketches I decided it might be too much of a challenge and consoled myself with the thought that insufficient variety of materials was being shown anyway.
Glass - bottles and light bulb -pastel
From this I moved on to china, wood and glass objects. Very traditional, I know. My initial sketch worked for me so I continued working on it. At this point though I felt I needed more knowledge on aspects of composition so read through a few texts to get ideas.
Sketchbook
I read about the golden square and the idea of splitting the paper diagonally. The pepper mill achieved this but I wasn't sure whether the small bowl was needed to take the eye into the picture from the bottom right, and I'm still not sure but I decided to leave it out. I played around with a teaspoon but it still didn't look right so this area I left bare.
I knew I was going to use charcoal and because I really like drawings on coloured paper with charcoal and chalk thought this would be interesting to try. As part of my preparation for this I tried watercolour on A3 and this left me with more questions as I could see the colours didn't work well together and I cut out patterned card, for fun, and quite liked the effect.
Card cut out
What I did find out from this simple image was that I liked the bottle going off the page and the larger scale but decided against this. So the final drawing below shows the objects smaller than above and not as dynamic, but I don't think the larger size would have suited this treatment? As the pottery and plate are smooth surfaces I blended the charcoal. I was nervous of using hatching as I didn't think it would work, or that my skill was lacking in this size but looking back I should have tried this in a preliminary sketch. I tried to get the right degree of light in the reflections on the plate and wanted to suggest the wood of the pepper mill without overworking detail. Finally I highlighted certain areas with white chalk pencil in order to avoid blandness.
Final drawing
Charcoal and chalk on grey paper.
Overall I felt I made a fairly accurate interpretation of the group, but perhaps this needed more objects to provide interest. I'm not sure I placed the objects to achieve a really strong focal point but I managed to plan in some lost and found edges- eg mug against plate and tried to plan in light against dark. What I do like about it is I feel it has a certain calmness and actually surprised myself in that it turned out better than I thought and made me realise how much I have learned. Planning could have been better but not due to lack of time, simply lack of organisation. My thoughts were that planning a composition is like juggling twenty balls in the air at once. In time I hope some of these techniques will become automatic processes.
Assignment -Natural objects.
This started out with a variety of fruit and vegetables and my initial sketch contained more objects.
I took one clove from the bulb of garlic and moved the mushroom out to the left -again to create a triangular composition. Having looked at still lifes, especially Cezanne I noticed that a simple line could denote a platform.
Sketchbook
Also I thought that it was important for the stalks of the peppers to provide interesting shapes and angles in relation to each other. Because I liked the composition I decided to concentrate on trying different media for the preliminary sketches. I knew that I wanted a different effect from the assignment of man made pieces and that I wanted something with more 'energy' which to me meant using more line. Consequently I tried out the same drawing three times.
Artist's pens
Graphite pencil
Coloured pencil
Finally I sketched it out roughly on A2 in charcoal and then in charcoal pencil.
charcoal pencil
I tried putting a background tone onto the paper as I was thinking about the possibility of drawing the space rather than the pepper but I didn't want it in quite this format. In the end I hatched the background, and the foreground of the shelf and completed the drawing in charcoal pencil.
Probably more consideration could have gone into the final composition as I settled quite quickly on the final arrangement. Although this is quite an accurate depiction, I think, I made the garlic clove too dark and the central stalk on the pepper should have been taller to help create a triangular shape which I'd achieved in the sketch. The shadow of the stalk on the mushroom was too dark and I could see the reflected light from the mushrooms onto the left pepper but don't think I've drawn this aspect very well.
you are being very accurate in depicting your journey through the artsy world...I am loving this detailed monologue...please keep on...
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