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Unusual Interior Spaces
Unusual Interior Spaces
Areas of focus: variety, rhythm, and unity
Areas of focus: variety, rhythm, and unity
Goal: Illustrate a typical interior space, such as the interior of your fridge or closet, in an unusual composition. Possible sources of inspiration: fridge, car interiors, kitchen or bathroom cabinets, linen closets, coat closets, personal closets, insides of drawers, sheds, workshops, tool boxes, tackle boxes. Anywhere that you can "look" into and observe multiple intricate items to draw or paint.
Process:
1. Spend some time investigating your home, school, place of work, or any other area you can think of for hidden unusual interior spaces tucked away behind closed doors and drawers. While looking at these spaces think of how you can arrange your composition to highlight the subjects and negative space of your work in an interesting way. Remember how we can use the rule of thirds, leading lines, and negative space to create drama and interest in our work. For more information about composition-strategies click here.
As you look for an interesting composition, think about:
-What meaning or message is sent to your audience based on your subject?
-Why do we keep this subject behind a closed door?
-Is it to hide your subject from others?
-Is it to organize and tidy up other areas?
-Is it to contain a specific item such as food or clothing?
2. As you are exploring your environment, take several reference photos. Experiment with the cropping, framing, and point of view of your composition. Remember it is always better to have too many photos of possible subject matter and composition than not enough, especially if you cannot easily recreate the composition in the future!
3. Before beginning to draw, you may find it beneficial to print a black and white copy of your subject. This allows you to crop your photo for interest and to investigate the perspective used in your composition. Feel free to mark perspective notations on the printed picture. It is very likely that your composition is in 1-point perspective like most of the images and the slides above. Using a vanishing point and guidelines to help create depth within your piece shows a high level of marksmanship.
4. The items in your space also need to be drawn with attention to perspective. Below are some helpful hints how to break down objects into perspective.
5. As you approach this piece, push yourself to experiment with your media choices like several of the example. You could draw on toned paper, use mixed medias such as contour line drawing with watercolor accents (medicine cabinet example), or experiment with mark making like the scumbling on black with white (the closest example). How can your media choice and application add interest or emphasis aspect of your composition? How can your media choice add to the content of your composition? How can the media choice and application affect the final emotional qualities of your piece? Record any media exploration in your sketchbook.
6. Create your final piece on an appropriately sized final paper. Work with your teacher to prepare this if you need assistance. The minimum is 8"x10" and maximum is 18"x14".
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