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Narrative or Personally Important Still Life
Narrative or Personally Important Still Life
Areas of focus: Informal balance, emphasis, figure/ground, and scale
Areas of focus: Informal balance, emphasis, figure/ground, and scale
Goal: To illustrate a collection of items that tell a story to the viewer simply by their juxtaposition OR to illustrate a collection of items that tells the viewer about something that is important to you. Your work should have a strong composition with attention to figure ground, emphasis, balance, and scale of your subject matter.
Questions to ask for the “Personally Important Still Life”:
- What is my most prized possession?
- What represents hobbies I invest my time in?
- What represents sports I play or participate in?
- What objects represent my favorite school subject?
- What objects make me feel most at ease or comfortable?
- What objects make me think of people that are important to me?
Questions to ask for the “Narrative Still Life”:
- What simple daily actions can I illustrate in an interesting way?
- Something going awry?
- An unexpected result?
- A process.
- A recipe or directions.
Process:
1. Begin in your sketchbook by brainstorming subject matter that is of potential interest to you. Write down or sketch any and all ideas that you generate, nothing is silly at this stage in the process.
2. Select your final subject matter from your brainstorming. You will be creating a "Personally Important Still Life" or a "Narrative Still Life". Gather the needed objects to create the still life. Be mindful that you will be addressing the foreground, middle ground, and background within your composition. Does it make more sense to arrange and photograph your objects on location on in a specific setting? Will this help support your background information such as the example of the bath time rubber ducky being in the shower?
3. Arrange and photograph your still life. While you shoot your work, think about creating an interesting composition. The rule of thirds and leading lines are always helpful tricks. Take more photographs than you think you will need. Take several photos of the entire composition to allow for you to select the most interesting arrangement. Also, take various close-up photos for reference of areas that may be challenging to you. Take more photos than you will need just to be safe.
*You may choose to work from life by continuing to look at your gathered objects in person, but you must take photos of your over all composition to enable you to be able to work both inside and outside of the class.
4. Your media choice is completely up to you. When selecting your media, ask:
- What media will most complement what I have selected for my still life?
- What media do I feel I can adequately capture the information of my still life with?
- Is precise mark making (pencil, pen and ink) more important or is color (acrylic, tempera paint, watercolor), or both (colored pencil)?
- What media will most show my abilities to accurately capture the character to the subject matter I am portraying?
5. Work with your teacher once your media has been decided to establish an appropriate working side for this assignment. Work large enough to capture the needed details of your subject matter, but not so large that you cannot complete your work in time. You minimum size is 8"x10" and your maximum size is 18"x24".
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