Traditional Art

Week 9

Observational Studies and 3-Point Perspective

In today's session, we headed outside to the campus to carry out some observational studies of buildings surrounding us using three point perspective; this method is where you apply the same rules of two point, but add a third vanishing point above or below the horizon line. Since we are looking up at the buildings and cannot see the top face, the third vanishing point will be situated above the horizon line, where the base of the building lies. We were tasked with drawing around three buildings.

This was my first attempt; I took photographs of each building I drew to ensure I still had a good reference in case I wanted to go back to it later. Our tutor also informed us that using a photo can alleviate the piece as the distortion is more evident compared to when we're directly observing with our eyes. I chose this building to begin due to its simplistic shape, only featuring overlapping rectangles which was a good warmup

In terms of feedback, I was told to flare out the far left side as it was slightly too parallel, not allowing the perspective to be plausible and pleasing to the eye. I received a tip of changing my method of understanding angles with my pencil when it comes to buildings in photo form. Instead of holding the pencil on the line, I can align it with the edge slightly above so both angles are clear and ensures I'm capturing the angle accurately. Finally, I was advised to darken my lines once the angles were cleared up so I could move onto the next study.

I increased the degree of challenge with this attempt, this building including more complex overlapping shapes and curvature. My only critique this time was to steepen the angle of the far left, flaring it out from the base for a more tilted effect like the photo. I'm quite proud of this piece to say it was daunting at first, I believe I did well in capturing its shape.

With a furthered understanding of drawing buildings in perspective, I decided to begin incorporating detail. I believe this task went okay, but I omitted quite a few since the drawing wasn't huge; I would've liked to add more but this is at least a start. I used the method of finding the centre of a plane through marking its diagonals to equally mark each four windows on the side accurately. My employment of techniques in drawing to achieve accuracy is proving useful as they're gradually improving. The general shape of this building was decently done so I wasn't given any feedback.

During the break, I diverted from the topic of buildings to draw this beauty to refresh my mind; Ioannis said he'll be very disappointed if I don't put this moisturised queen on my blog so you must bear the burden of seeing it too. <3

Dev Log Evaluation:

This session was a great start to learning to draw buildings in perspective and I came out of it feeling much more confident about this area in art than previously. I found strengths in the ability to capture likeness in the overall shape of the buildings, which is the first step to an effective drawing. As long as your base is accurate and readable, the next steps will surely be successful too. While I didn't add too many details, I believe I made a good start using the diagonal method to find the centre for accurate placement.

My main issue within this task was ensuring the lines flared out to prevent parallelism which would damage the fluidity and perspective; I ensured that the sides especially flared out to emphasize the scale of these buildings compared to my point of view on the ground.

With this session complete, I'm feeling confident and ready to tackle more buildings with added detail too.

Week 10

Queen's Building - Perspective Grids

This session initiated the process of our first submission piece; it would see us going to the Queen's building on campus to carry out observational studies specialising in 3pt perspective.

We would begin this session taking photos of potential areas used for reference in the submission piece, followed by drawing thumbnails of them to capture its essence and understanding its perspective and structure. These two are photos I excluded from the drawing process due to lacking areas such as the overcomplexity of the components in the first one, with lots of overlapping areas like the plethora of bars in the handrails and the stair-like structure of the ceiling. The latter photo was excluded due to the lack of visual interest - while it worked perspective-wise, it still needed subjects within the piece that draw the eye.

This is my first attempt at a thumbnail in 3pt perspective; I used the pencil/hand measuring method to capture the correct angles in each component. While this piece is certainly primitive, it was my first shot at this and I aimed to achieve an accurate perspective over including detail. Although I succeeded, I believe I won't use this one for my submission piece due to this overlapping wall extrusions that get lost with distance and the excessive amount of brick detail I'd have to draw. Attention to detail and hard work are admirable but it's important not to overexert yourself and forget other areas of work to complete.

I found myself to be improving in 3pt perspective, able to include details too as shown by this second thumbnail. I believe some angles are a little skewed because I drew this one from a photo rather than in person, but I can feel my confidence growing.

For my final thumbnail, I aimed to capture something more complex with much stronger visual allure. The combination of the stairs and the hand rails made for a daunting piece to approach. To tackle it, I began by establishing the horizontals such as the floor surrounding the stairs and lining the walls, followed by the verticals of the walls using the hand/pencil measuring method. With this complete, I added the bars that hold the stairs together on each side which helped me in placing the stairs. For the rails, I measured lines and expanded them once marked down. With additional details like surrounding doors and pipes implemented, this thumbnail was complete.

Dev Log Evaluation:

This session brought great clarity to me in terms of perspective; I walked in feeling intimidated by the complex structures and details, but simply making an attempt without expectations brought me far already. I built my skills in 3pt perspective and with the final thumbnail going well, I feel ready to start on the actual submission piece.

What I'd like to improve on is adding detail to a complex perspective like this. In thumbnails, it wasn't necessary but I can't omit any components in the piece when it's finalised, so I must practice ensuring details follow the angles accordingly so the complete piece maintains accuracy. The primary feedback I received from my tutor was to treat these drawings as they are, thumbnails, since the final piece was already looking complex in such a small size meaning I lost details with the lack of space.

Despite adding too much detail to a small area, doing this did help me understand how to go about scaling it up for the final piece; my method of drawing single lines for the railing and drawing around them to add dimension helped in terms of efficiency. With a decent understanding of how to draw this photo, I felt ready to start the first submission piece.

Week 11

Composition:

Starting the second submission piece, we practiced creating thumbnails with composition as the priority. Along with primary components with varying visual hierarchy to guide the eyes, composition creates a path for the viewers that is pleasing to observe. There's a myriad of composition types, such as the rule of thirds which employ two grid lines both horizontally and vertically to create a 3x3 grid. Focal points often fall on the central axes to place emphasis on them and establish a transition between areas such as a landscape view featuring fields on the bottom row, buildings in a village on the middle, and a clear sky on the top row. In this session, I'll be experimenting with varying types of composition to see how I can use it to my advantage.

Focusing less on accuracy and perspective, I attempted to see the compositional aspects of this piece. When drawing, I focused mostly on gesture and negative space to attain an accurate piece while maintaining a focus on composition.

Within this thumbnail, I can see a triangular composition that starts at the pacman clock in the bottom left, moving upwards to the bottom right of the microphone, and finally connecting at the head of the microphone to establish a triangle that contains the piece. The dog figurine at the back strengthens this idea due to its sloped silhouette, virtually creating the topmost line of the triangle.

This thumbnail was a good demonstration of how object placement can affect composition; placing objects on a similar plane, all aligned can cause a piece to feel flat and uninteresting. Adding variation to their placement by moving them back and forth to create visual hierarchy strengthens the piece as certain components hold more emphasis. While I believe this piece demonstrates that and I succeeded in my ellipses, the large flask at the back disturbs the piece as the lines intersect and cause tangents, which are visually confusing and create a lack of distinction in each object.

Of the premade sets, this one caught my eye due to the narrative motif of food. In observing it, I noticed a possible application of the rule of thirds. This was demonstrated in how each food piece vertically align with different sections of the pan, and how the pan and food are horizontally separated. The separation of the food and pan could suggest a narrative of how humans adapted to process food for their own enjoyment and nourishment, shown by the naturally occurring pumpkin, the pan above it, and the pot leading down to the man-made bread.

For a final thumbnail, I decided to gather my own set of objects to create a composition from scratch. This allowed me to think consciously about how to arrange the pieces and implement compositional techniques. I set up a basket of fruit, with an animal's jaw leaning on it and a bear statue approaching on the opposite side. Gesturally, I appreciate how the leaning jaw slopes upwards with the apple sitting atop the basket building more height, and finally reaching the bear which holds the greatest scale which creates an exponentially growing piece. Narratively, this could suggest how scale represents strength and endurance within this piece; the jaw bone represents an embodiment of death, a lack of survivability in nature. The basket of fruit could be a representation of nature in itself, perhaps a symbol of god due to the apple's strong visual emphasis placed at the top, referencing the forbidden fruit. With god's creation comes an eventual end, suggesting the cycle of life within the basket. Following this is the bar, strong and thriving within nature, hunting with purpose and determination. This was quite an analytic reach but sub-textual narrative in a piece can add depth beyond structure.

Dev Log Evaluation:

This session felt freeing in its look at composition. I didn't have to worry about the accuracy of perspective, but rather gesture which I greatly enjoy. It feels more flexible and natural to me, and looking for composition techniques within pieces was a fun puzzle. Connecting things to craft a narrative was another fun way to strengthen these compositions and I feel happy about the one I created, feeling narratively and compositionally strong and ready to scale up and render. Its variation in texture from straw, to natural fruit, to bone, to some ambiguous synthetic matte material (the bear), feels exciting to tackle as I can use a variety of rendering techniques to attain an accurate look for each material.

Week 15

House Structure:

After returning from Christmas break, we took a look at some 3D-printed houses; we attempted to draw these to understand how to measure proportion in each segment for an accurate drawing. This included considering perspective, measuring angles for correct placement, and using our pencils to measure segments and distribute them evenly.

To begin, I measured the angles of a disconnected roof segment to establish its placement on the table. From there, I measured the roof's angles and extruded it backwards, keeping in mind the converging of lines.

From here, I lightly marked the diagonals on the long side of the roof and drew a line down the middle to find the centre of it. With this, I extrude a side section outwards with accuracy. With the total base complete, I began to add the front face's details.

Finally adding some subtle roof tiles to understand how to mark these details, I was complete with the first attempt.

In receiving feedback, my tutor suggested how I'd eyeballed the beams and windows on the house's front face. He showed me how to accurately measure a triangular face, by marking a square around it and doing the diagonal method as usual, simply applying it to the triangle.

For its boxier structure, I felt this segment would be good to study as it has a simpler structure, allowing me to focus on details like beams. Once again, I measured the bottom lines' angles to establish its placement and built the house up from there, using the diagonal method on the side face to attain its centre and build up the triangular roof.

In terms of feedback, my tutor pointed out how the lines failed to converge, which created a flat appearance. I also didn't make the long side long enough, causing me to squish the beams in, leading to the window being too small.

Dev Log Evaluation:

While I didn't succeed to create anything amazing this session, practice is still practice and I learned how to measure shapes like triangles correctly and ensure the proportion is correct to fit details in fairly. I do feel a little worried about creating a full house for the final submission piece, I know I learnt some valuable lessons today and will hope to apply them successfully next session.

Week 16

House Composition and Foliage:

We began planning for our final submission piece in this session, drawing a full house (not in detail) and placing foliage like trees and bushes around it to create a strong silhouette with compositional details. We were to improvise the foliage details which tested our imagination and ability to implement something and ensure it fits the environment.

After observing a few different houses, I ended up choosing this one for its interesting balcony and portrayal of the roof's section from the front and side. We already had a cloth on the table draped over objects to mimic natural land, and potted plants to spark our imagination with foliage but this was optional if we chose to include it.

I started by roughly sketching the house to understand its structure and silhouette since I'll be repeating this a lot and need to acquire efficiency through understanding.

For my first iteration, I added bonsai trees with twisting roots and a round, fluffy head of leaves. Creating a silhouette version of this drawing, I observed the negative space between each tree next to the house which help to depict the size difference between the roof and the base of the house. It emphasises the roof's magnitude too, exaggerating the house's silhouette and making for a harmonic composition. I observed the distinction in shape language too, seeing how sturdier shapes like squares and triangles feature in the house, depicting its calculated, man-made quality whereas, the trees possess a lot of curvature and round shape language, representing the familiarity of nature.

With this iteration, I chose to follow a triangular motif by using pine trees and holly bushes as foliage. The sharp nature of pine trees in their triangular structure help to strengthen this motif thanks to its similarity to the triangular roof which leads to a consistent piece. The addition of holly bushes is to add some extra detail with a continued sharpness to the foliage, while also following a potential narrative of winter-time; pine trees and holly are heavily associated with Christmas and would still be thriving in this season. I could even add snow if I wanted extra detail. I made the leftmost pine tree the largest asset in the piece, with them gradually decreasing in size towards the right to create a sloping effect which makes for a valid triangular composition.

I chose to utilise dead trees for this iteration instead of bushy trees full of leaves and thriving life. This established a spookier atmosphere, with an air of death about. The jagged, triangular shape language with the trees signify danger and intimidate the viewer; I hoped to attain a silhouette which has the trees resembling hands grasping the house like the grips of death coming for its habitants. This piece was more abstract and focused on narrative strongly. However, I don't like the idea of drawing intricate, chaotic branches and want a friendlier composition.

Dev Log Evaluation:

Despite feeling intimidated due to my lack of success in the previous session, I really enjoyed this session and improved upon my ability to draw houses from observation. My tutor pointed out how they liked my approach to the iterations using silhouettes to ensure they appear interesting, and I believe I annotated these effectively.

They also said how the pine tree iteration felt strongest and I agree. Compositionally it shows strengths and the motif of triangles within the shape language add to its strength with its cohesivity. Therefore, I'll be taking this thumbnail to scale up and render.

Week 17

Submission Piece 1:

Following the same process as with the thumbnail of this piece, I marked the horizontal lines to establish the floor and where the gap for the stairs would be. After this, I drew up the vertical lines to establish the walls. With the general room space done, I moved onto marking the staircase by measuring the angles of the bars holding up the stairs - this does half my job in terms of placing the stairs themselves. I then measured each stair and added them in, followed by singular lines to mark the rails which I drew around to add thickness to them. Next, I added in extra details like the doors, pipes, and posters.

With the basic outline complete, I could start rendering. I began by using a 2H pencil to subtly darken the whole piece, meaning I only had to erase white areas rather than carefully render every value but white. This method allows for a great establishment of value and eases the process of darkening areas.

Using a HB pencil, I outlined the dark sides of the railings, adding a soft gradient where necessary. I'd repeat this process for the entirety of the railings, erasing where the light would fall on them.

This is how the piece looked with all the railings rendered, I kept in mind that my primary light source would be coming from where the photo was taken, leading to the topside of the railings being lightest.

With this, I began rendering the bottom half of the stairs; I used a 2H pencil to shade it initially, building it up with a B pencil for darker tones. The use of the H pencil as a base was to ensure the B's markings appeared smooth like the floor appears to be. The tone of the stairs featured a white strip along the edge and a grey tone for the rest, leading to a light grey and dark grey for the lower face, exposed to less light.

This is how the stairs look fully rendered, the shadows increasing as they go up since more of the bottom side is exposed.

Using a 2H pencil, I created a gradient across these pipes to portray their roundness through soft shading, along with the shadows curving at the stem of the pipe.

Next, I started to darken the piece more by adding tone to the walls with my 2H pencil, followed by my HB pencil; I used a 4B one for the deeply shadowed areas like under the stairs and the bottom side of the top floor's guard wall.

With my B pencil, I started marking horizontal lines to establish the brick pattern along the wall, keeping in mind the perspective causing them to gradually converge and curve in opposite direction either side of the wall.

To finish off the brick pattern, I added vertical lines to every other row. This method was an efficient way of creating a brick pattern that saved me much time.

With the implementation of some cast shadows and going over some lines with a 2B pencil to capture any value that was smudged away, the first submission piece was completed.

Dev Log Evaluation:

This submission piece was definitely a challenge due to the large scale of the drawing with tone covering almost all of the page, leaving a lot to render.

However, I will say I believe I succeeded in capturing the 3pt perspective well. Most of it feels fairly accurate as I paid attention to the angles I was measuring and I'm really proud since it's such a complex piece. I struggled with including all the detail since so many elements overlapped or were hidden by objects in the forefront; when observing my reference, it made my brain feel fuzzy so I had to take time to simplify the structure in my head to understand it and develop it. I even omitted certain details like extra pipes and gratings on the ceiling which I'm not proud of.

If I'm to attempt a piece like this again, I want to go back to that area to understand the complex parts (e.g. pipes on ceiling) so I can include them next time, as the lack of detail took away from the piece's overall allure. Despite this, I still think I did a good job and will work hard on the next one.

Submission Piece 2:

With the first submission piece complete, I could begin work on the 2nd. I started by marking a border around the page to ensure I didn't overscale anything.

Starting with the central piece of the basket, I drew a vertical line to mark its placement followed by drawing some ellipses to attain the shape and curves of the basket. Since the distance wasn't largely far, the curve of the ellipses wouldn't be too heavy.

From here, I measured the angles of the parts of the jaw and bear touching the ground and focused on silhouettes to get the shape right. I drew the outlines first and then added the details like the teeth and the lines of the bear within.

Mostly using a HB pencil, I rendered the jaw bone first as it'd be the lightest value of the piece and it'd allow me to determine the value of the darker objects easier. The use of HB allowed for a lighter tone but still with some rough texture to it; I shaded freely with scribbles lightly followig the shape's contour, adding dots in where cracks and crevices may be. I added onto the shadows with a 2B pencil for extra depth.

With the bone done, I started rendering the orange as it'd be affected by the bone, a cast shadow falling upon it. Therefore, I implemented a base shade with HB and started with the cast shadow before everything else.

I then started building up the tone of the orange with a soft gradient darkening towards the basket where shadows would lie.

Using a 2B pencil for some extra dark values on the core shadows, I had a correctly toned orange. For the finishing touches, I added dots to represent the pores(?) on them.

Next, I shaded the avocado thing which had a much deeper tone than the orange so I started with the 2B pencil and shaded everywhere but the borders and highlighted area. I didn't shade any of the highlighted areas as this meant I could add creases in the light without intricately erasing areas.

After darkening the tone some more and adding creases to the skin, I was done with the avocado. It wasn't intentional at all but it looks as though the highlighted area has a face and they are in great distress. Perhaps these are my subconscious feelings unintentionally manifesting in my artwork.

I followed the same process for this ambiguous citrus fruit as the orange, this time shading along other lines since it wasn't perfectly spherical.

Rendering the Apple:

The sweetcorn has fairly hard shadows so no complex rendering is necessary here; however it's important to place the corn in the right areas so I drew a cross on the cob's face to find the centre, drawing lines stemming from it to run down the sides. I then drew vertical lines curving around the side as a grid to draw the corn on.

This is the finish corn, with very deep shadows to show how the corn extrudes from the core and is dehydrated.

To begin the basket, I observed its structure carefully in how the straws overlap and intertwine, and how many layers of this occur. With the pattern marked down, I coloured it in lightly with a 2H pencil to establish its base value.

Rendering the basket was pretty simple, using a B pencil to add shadows on the underside with a scratchy blend to depict the roughness of the straw.

Using a 2B pencil, I added the shadows between the layers of the basket.

I began shading the bear by lightly colouring it with a 2H pencil; this is the darkest object in the scene so it's important to establish some tone before rendering.

Shading the Faces of the Statue:

After repeating the demonstrated process, this is how the bear was looking.

This is how it's looking at this stage. With the general rendering complete, I need to add a background to show the lightness of the bone and add cast shadows for realism; however, I believe the bear isn't dark enough so I'll go over with a 4B pencil to ensure it matches the image, along with deepening the shadows throughout the rest of the piece so it's cohesive.

With those final steps complete, the 2nd submission piece is finished.

Dev Log Evaluation:

I'm feeling really happy with this piece, especially the polygonal bear statue for how I added subtle highlights to the edges of each face to make each face distinct. I believe I captured the varying textures of the fruit effectively through their differing tones and highlights. The basket feels flat in some way and I think it needs just a little extra shading under the darkest straw strips but other than that I'm pretty happy with this piece and ready to move onto the last.

Week 18

Submission Piece 3:

I started with my sketch which I measured the angles of carefully and measured each section to ensure the building's segments were all proportional to one another. I generally got the scale correct and the horizontal segments correct but my tutor pointed out that the left column was too thin, meaning I squashed the balcony inwards. Once fixing this, I was ready to start adding details.

Taking into account the feedback I received in the previous house drawing session about drawing a square around a triangle to measure it properly, I was able to place all the details accordingly and I did the diagonal method again to place the windows.

This is how the roof's front face was looking after the implementation of some details.

I measured the placement of each triangular window using plumb lines; this is where you align certain details vertically and horizontally and draw lines from them until they intersect to find where another detail is placed. The middle triangle aligned with the middle of the left door vertically and I drew a line parallel to the top face of the curved balcony to place all of the triangles horizontally.

After more careful measuring to place beams and windows and cleaning up linework with a HB pencil, I was ready to start rendering.

I made this (very) rough mock-up in greyscale to depict what values I want to place where when rendering since the reference model is completely monotone; I want the roof to be the darkest value, the beams the next darkest, followed by the stone, and then the plaster walls which will be the lightest.

I blocked out some trees with basic cone shapes to ensure they fit on the page and achieved what I desired with the composition.

After outlining the trees, I used my 2H pencil to add a base value to the house.

To shade the beams, I would flatly colour them with my 2B pencil. I would then outline the beams and a few darker streaks to achieve that woody texture beams have. Following this, I would use my 4B pencil to imply where the shadows of the upper house would cast on this section.

For the stone texture, I used my previous curved lines for the balcony to create parallel ones underneath to mark where the stones would be laid. I then used my HB pencil and draw rectangles of various sizes with a soft gradient on the underside.

With the whole of the house rendered, I was ready to move onto the pine trees.

I used my HB pencil to create curved hatchings upwards from each row of leaves, this left a soft appearance with a nice gradient that depicts the clear sunlight in the scene. I followed this up with my 2B pencil, lining the edges for some extra depth.

I then used my 2B pencil to make much thinner lines to show where the sunlight hits the tree.

For the finishing touches, I used my 2H pencil to sketch out the sky in the background and used my putty to erase some areas loosely to create the look of clouds on a sunny day.

Dev Log Evaluation:

I'm really proud that I've finished all these traditional pieces now. I believe this house study turned out much better than I expected as I've always struggled with buildings, but keeping proportion in mind by measuring frequently was a great assisting factor in the process. I really liked my approach to the roof as it made each tile look like the edges had corroded and caused a highlight to appear, feeling very stylised. I think this was promoted by my use of less tiles in general, making them bigger allowed for more interesting shape to be used. I like how I used my eraser to create clouds to imply the weather condition within the scene too.

I believe I could've done better to show the sunny weather though, as the side face doesn't appear dark enough when sunlight causes rather harsh shadows. Using a 6B pencil could've helped to darken it some more. It appears that some of the stones and trees don't have great contrast but I believe that's the pencil smudging so I'll be sure to touch that up before submission.

Overall, I'm feeling pretty happy about stepping outside of my comfort zone to draw a lot of complex things and especially buildings in perspective which I always struggled with, so I'm proud to have overcome it. Even if it's not my best work, I'm feeling encouraged to keep working towards improvement.

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