Time Capsules

These are four observational drawings that I created as time capsules for this year. Because I'm taking AP Drawing and Painting, I used the AP prompts for these pieces. The prompts, in order as depicted, are a drawing of a paper sculpture, a drawing of a super-zoomed in part of yourself, a drawing that represents your past, and an object that represents your future. For all four pieces I used graphite on 9" x 12" paper as my medium and spent approximately thirty minutes on each one. For this reason they are not all complete compositions but merely basic starting points for the year. For each piece I used a similar process. I started by lightly sketching the outlines and major contours of each object and then proceeded to increase line weight and shade as needed. In all of these pieces I think that the line accuracy is strong, despite the lines being too light. The texture is strong in the thumb and paper swan drawings and I think that I was able to accurately display the textures of those surfaces through shading and contour lines.

For these pieces, I mostly applied only basic formal balance and centered the subjects on the paper. I think that adding horizon lines would have strengthened all but the thumb piece because the other objects appear to be floating in space to some extent. These pieces had little evolution for the most part, but one change that I did make was to the subject of the piece representing my past. I started with many more action figures and castle structures but decided to draw only the center part of the castle and two figurines because of the time restrictions for the project.

For the drawing of a paper sculpture I wanted to make a basic origami sculpture and draw that. However, I was disappointed in the simplicity of the swan that I made and decided to add more of a back with wings that I crafted myself. My thumb seemed like an convenient part of my body to look closely at and draw and I actually found the small contours of the wrinkles in my hand intriguing and I enjoyed the process. In thinking about my past, I thought of many happy childhood memories of playing various games with my parents and younger brother. However, I also enjoyed playing by myself and I felt that LEGOS, which I used constantly, encompassed all of this. Finally, instead of thinking of my longterm future, I thought of my short term future: this moment actually. I drew this computer that I'm typing on, with this webpage that you're reading being created. When I made the piece it represented my future, and as soon as I finish writing this, it will be in my past. These projects all relate to my life because they represent various parts of it. The less direct connection to my life is in the paper sculpture. It relates to me in that I designed parts of it and it represents originality even if I didn't create the design for all of it. I think these pieces could all be stronger if I had used greater line weight and shaded more to create a greater contrast. All of the depictions are fairly light and would be stronger if they were darker.