Observational Drawing

Artist Statement

For this assignment I did a few observational still life drawings. In class I started Still Life 3 and finished it outside of class but when I was done I didn't really like it. I had done a few other still life drawings the week before which I really liked so I included those as Still Life 1 and 2. The first one I did was a setup I made out of two vases and an apple on a green blanket for a simple background. I did two different pieces based off of that setup. The second setup was a vase, a fake plant, a key, and some chess pieces that I just put on my desk.

The materials I used for Still Life 1 and Still Life 3 were pencil and oil pastel on toned paper. I really like how the oil pastels looked on top of the grey paper. For Still Life 2 I used charcoal on toned paper. They are all the same size because I did them all on paper from the same sketchbook. I chose to make them small so I could focus more on the sizes of the objects in relation to each other and on the lighting. The lighting was much clearer in the first one than it was in the third one which I think is why it looks better and has more depth to it. The lamp that I had gave off a yellow light so I blended some yellow pastel in where the light hits the objects. For the charcoal drawing I didn't even start off with pencil because I had just spent a long time on the oil pastel version so I was familiar enough with the setup to just start with charcoal. I also used some white charcoal to add the highlights because the paper was toned so it added the mid tones already just like white paper would have already added highlights.

For the oil pastel drawings I was more focused on the colors and for the charcoal drawing I was more focused on the values. I tried to set up the objects in a balanced way so that the drawing would have a good composition. By having simple backgrounds there was more emphasis on the objects. I think the first oil pastel drawing looks better than the third one because there is more contrast between the color of the object and the color of the background. I experimented a lot with these pieces because I was new to oil pastels and I don't do a lot of still life observational drawings. I think my next steps could be to do more observational drawings so that I can get better at them.