Candy Still Life

For this unit, we did two different projects. The first project we did was our shaded spheres. The purpose of this was to experiment with the different materials and to play around with the proper placing of the shadows and highlights in the spheres. I did my best to replicate the example that we were given to look at. For the candy still life we had to focus on the highlights and building contour. We had to draw candy that we overlapped and make sure that we made it look as realistic as we could using the different materials that we were able to experiment with. These projects relate to my life because they are different than what we have been doing. They are more complex as our lives tend to get and we have to learn new and more complicated things as we get older and more involved in things.

For the spheres, we used a 9x12 in. piece of paper and used many different materials to complete the piece. We used watercolor, chalk, and pastels to create our spheres and add highlights to them. For my candy still life, however, we used a 9x12 in. piece of paper which we then created a one-inch border around the edge of it. I used a 4H pencil to sketch my work and it’s light so it was easier to erase if I made any mistakes. I also used watercolors, chalk pastels, and colored pencils to complete this piece.

For both of these projects, I had to experiment with a few different things, ideas, and materials to get my final products. For the spheres, I wasn’t sure how to make some of the highlights pop with the different materials because they were all very different when applying them to your artwork. I had to do trial and error on a few of the spheres because I kept messing up with the chalk pastels. They were really hard to use because of the fact that they spread so much when you put them down on paper. This caused a problem for me because for the highlights, you are supposed to have a lighter “whitish” area and when it spread it covered are up with too much color. I didn’t have too much trouble with the other spheres and I preferred the watercolor the best because it gave me the most control over the color. For the candy still life, I went through a process with a lot of different ideas also. We started by gluing a bunch of different candies to a template which we then drew and enlarged on a different piece of paper. I broke the template up into 8 sections using a sharpie so that it would be easier to get the proportions right on my candy still life. I also had to experiment a lot with the different materials. For example, for each of my shapes, I first went over with watercolor and layered that to give it some sort of based and then used colored pencils in some areas and white chalk pastels in other to make the images pop and look more realistic. If I were to do these projects again, I would work on making sure all of my highlights are where they should. I would also try and get the images I draw to almost “pop” to make them look more realistic than in the projects I have already completed.