Traditional Art

For this new layout, I had an easier time with the thumbnail and got it down swiftly. The only gripe was that I underestimated the vertical scale of the pitcher with flowers in it which towered above my thumbnail borders, which led me to omitting those in the thumbnail. Thankfully, I was able to apply that to the full drawing.

In starting the full-scale drawing, I started out VERY faint to get an abstract impression of each object, marking their general shape and scale before accurately drawing them and adding any lines.

Next, I used ellipses to construct the vase. I had the depth/curvature of the ellipses down as it was at a decent distance where it wasn't overly round, but also wasn't flat if it were up close. Kras helped me fixed the symmetry of it since I'd drawn the vertical base line for it wonky, which affected its symmetry as I tried to correct its vertical stature. With the vertical line adjusted and the symmetry fixed, I had a developed version of this drawing.

When I increased the contrast on the artwork, I found a great split through the piece between dark and light; the foreground collects most of the shadows, whereas the background with the temple and sky are completely light. However, an interesting exception is made with the temple door, the focal point of this piece - the drawing's contrast maintains the visual emphasis of this doorway using deep shadows within it, demonstrating the depth within the building and building the viewer's intrigue towards the building as a whole, aligning their feelings with the girl within the drawing.

(This time I paid close attention to my ellipses and centre line/symmetry and it paid off!)

With the drawing constructed, I moved onto rendering. I wanted to explore different techniques to bring distinction between each object's texture. Starting with the oranges, I gave cross hatching with a side of stippling a go. The cross hatching would follow the contour of the shape and emphasize its curvature and depth, whereas the stippling would represent the pores.

Moving onto the vase, I started by lightly shading it all, following its curvy contour to create a tonal base. This is the darkest object in the scene so this base was necessary. I built it up by squinting to observe where the major shadows lie, adding horizontal and smooth hatching on the neck and top which is wider, and horizontal, curvy hatching along the base and handle which are longer. I observed how the table affected the tone of this vase, as its light tone created a reflection that was much lighter than the reflections of the room, and general vase's value.

I sketched in the other object's reflections from the scene in the vase, although being too defined and needing more distortion and less of an outline to demonstrate the glossy, glazed nature of the glass. This was great practice for the specularity/metallic submission piece so I'll take this knowledge I've gained into that session. This was followed by erasing small spots to insert the major highlights of this vase.

I started by blocking in the cloth-covered platform so I could properly place all the objects - I measured each edge of the cloth towel using my pencil to deduct the angle.

Teo suggested I move the vase down to accommodate for the flowers properly so they fully fit in the scene, I reconstructed it using a symmetry line running upwards, drawing ellipses to mark each major curve of the vase and outlining its outer edges, finally marking where its pattern lies. I blocked in the rest of the objects very roughly with basic shapes retaining their silhouette.

I was also advised to put the little guy back in, on the right further back to fill out some empty space and I found that the negative space is more dynamic with the man jutting out from the towel. I started working on the smaller details of the objects like adjusting the orchids position, marking the petals of the roses and added contour lines on the pumpkin to help when rendering to follow its shape.

I picked a composition to observe, turning the lamp away from me slightly so it wasn't necessarily facing me. My first issue was in the symmetry and placement of the bottle; as I drew on the edge of the page, I had less stability which caused the bottle to entirely tilt, which removed its immersion from the scene. I also found that the pencil sharpener lost definition in its position right in front of the lamp, which also muddied the plane the lamp sat on as its base was entirely obscured.

Someone else was also drawing this composition from a different angle and they repositioned the sharpener which ended up benefitting me too, as it was much more distinct from the lamp now and they could all be observed clearly on different planes. However, I found myself struggling with just getting anything down and felt rather insecure in my ability today, so Kras helped mark everything in the scene for me to go off of which is what is shown here.

Since I had so much trouble, I tried downsizing my drawings since drawing large can seem daunting at times, and focused on independent items to observe. I got a few down and the shape felt better, my lines were a little more confident but still I struggled.

To start, I focused on the centrepiece of the composition, the vase; it holds the most contrast due to its position close to the viewer so I made sure to lay down thick lines for this object. In depicting the depth of the vase as it curves inwards from the large middle piece, I used horizontal hatching that followed the contour of the shape. This collection of lines built the impression of a shadow which collected in observation.

The vase's pattern seems like a daunting thing to tackle, but I was able to approach it by starting with faint guidelines that marked where it'd curve, along with observing the major parts of the pattern such as the large fruit in the middle section. I also observed a large flower and left to the bottom right of this line of fruit which helped me place the details in between. With the important patterns marked, I then added the smaller patterns that appeared in a ring across the whole vase such as the small leaves at the top and bottom of the midsection. From here, I filled out the empty space with leaves.

With the pattern entirely marked down, I went in with a 4B pencil and thickened the middle-most lines along the vertical axis to show how light is coming from behind the scene primarily, which causes the pattern to thin out and fade as it reaches a much lighter tone.

I used sharp, geometric lines to craft the leaves and flowers sprouting from the vase not only to contrast its smooth curvature, but also to reflect how these pieces of foliage are wilting - they're succumbing to age, the opposite of vibrant youth which is depicted with soft, curvy lines that emit a glow of health.

For the cauliflower, I started with the silhouette and then separated the green leaves and the inner white curd with lines. Communicating the curd's unique texture felt important, so I used directional curved hatching that imitates the shape and grain of it with heavier lines separating the sub-curds within the overall head of vegetation.

The little man statue didn't require a lot of attention since it was the object furthest from my view so it needed less detail to show its position from me, as tertiary components are obscured with distance. I added his little coat patterns but I didn't use much heavy line weight or tone to show its faded from view slightly.

I started with a thumbnail - the structure was generally alright, but everything felt a little cramped. I also overscaled the pencil sharpener when it's the smallest part of the scene. I moved it outwards a little to distinguish it better in the larger drawing.

I started by roughly mapping out each object as Kras did for me in the previous session which helped give me a kickstart in constructing the overall drawing.

A third year advised that I scale the pan down a little, which was good advice to hear since I felt the pan lid was a little too small anyway, and this was the wiser thing to rescale as constructing the circular lid is more challenging.

Most areas of the drawing were constructed accurately and I did it independently which was a great achievement and confident booster to me, but I still needed some feedback. Kras helped me readjust the pot lid's handle to the correct position by using the axis method to find the centre of the lid, of which he extruded the handle from. I also had a slight symmetry issue with the glass bottle in the large curve which was a quick fix.

I asked Teo how my reflective distortions looked, since I made the choice to warp them in the pot lid's glass. I did this by curving the edges of the pot itself outwards where it is seen through the lid to show how glass distorts it, especially where the glass is embedded in an object. She approved of this and blocked in some tone to show how the outer ring of the lid would be visible in two separate planes as the glass exposes the second one.

With my feedback recieved, I was ready to begin blocking in tone and cleaning up this piece. I started by deepening the values in the middle of the pan, where the floor is being reflected. There are two distinct values here which include the dark floor, and the light wooden table; since the metal is a little worn and warped, I made sure the transition wasn't entirely sharp to maintain realism.

For the pan, I started with a base coat of 3B pencil with lots of directional hatching to communicate the brushed properties of this metal, followed by building the tone where the dark carpet is reflected and where any burn spots occurred. I made sure it was light near the edges where the highlights occur as the deepest point tonally is the middle - this is supported by how its the closest part to me, meaning it will have more definition.

The inside of the pan held a lot more reflections as this part would likely be cleaner and less rough due to boiling water cooking inside it, residually refreshing its surface and keeping it much glossier. These reflections occurred vertically but not completely straight - they were slightly wayward and curved so I played into that by giving them characteristic curve.

Once again, I used hatching to tackle the very thin ring of metal around the pot lid - I entirely omitted shading any lighter area since the ring is so thin, a highlight would be shown better with no tone rather than subtle tone. I also blocked out where the highlights would be on the handle, so I knew what to avoid shading when tackling the handle.

I used a combination of 3 and 8B for the handle, since the cast shadow of the handle is the darkest area in this piece. I shaded the handle as normal, avoiding the highlighted area and carefully approaching it due to its unified, matte surface that doesn't have heavy contrast.

I omitted another area on the glass of the lid where the light's reflection lay, rendering around it with the pot which gave it a soft glow as its borders were sketchy, this ended up as a benefit due to its luminosity.

I started the pencil sharpener by blocking in the tone of each side of it for distinct planes, adding curved lines where these faces meet to how the plastic warps around the circular metal area. I also avoided shading where the pencil shavings would be rather than outlining them to give a more realistic impression of their placement in the sharpener, feeling more integrated with these softer transitions.

I used the axis method to find the centre of the circle, placing the hole for sharpening there. To get the "teeth"(?) correct, I marked faint lines that showed where the deep shadow would be, drawing a star shape on it which gave me those distinct triangles. Trying to draw the triangles themselves likely would've left me with not enough room to give them some tone. 

Next, I added the screws and rendered the circular metallic surface. I made sure the source of light was reflected well, contrasted by the reflection of the pan lid which curves upwards instead of the direction it appears to go to show how its reflection distorts on this circular surface. Finally, I built up very subtle tone on the lighter plastic areas of the sharpener using a 2H pencil, followed by a 3B for any areas that needed more contrast like the edge transitions. I also erased lines where the glass would cast light onto it.

Finally, I added some very light tone to fill up the glass, with it increasing towards the edge. I left a gap between this area and the borders to demonstrate the light within the glass, however I struggled with rendering this bottle because lots of objects were reflected inside it from other compositions that I wasn't going to include so that'll be my main point to bring up during formative feedback. Otherwise, I only need to add cast shadows to complete this piece.

Starting with the orchids as the main focal point and lightest local value, I lightly shaded around their silhouette to depict their presence rather than outlining them - this increases the immersion of the scene where outlines can look cartoony, which I feel I've been guilty of before so tackling it this way was super exciting.

I started shading the petals individually based on their direction, deepening the value where the petals stem from to show how they collide and cause shadow, also building the surrounding tone.

This is how they looked when I finished them, although I didn't use a very dark pencil due to their delicate tone so they lacked contrast.

At a later point, I went over them with a 3B, mainly where the petals stemmed from and the column's hole in the middle where the shadows mainly lay - this built their cohesion with the tonal range of the rest of the composition.

I had already marked the location of the pattern in the session where I initially drew this piece, which meant I could get straight to rendering the vase. I used directional hatching to bring forth the curvature of the vase, using a 5B on darker areas as this object is the darkest locally speaking.

I also faded the edges to show the vase's glossiness interacting with the surroundings, along with deep lines on the top edge with strong specks of light to show the high contrast of the glazed surface. 

Next I worked on the pattern. I did this by following the marks I made previously, ensuring the spacing between each major line decreased with distance as the curve of the vase and the distance increasing causes them to squash together, basically in a form of foreshortening. Finally, I shaded the rest of the areas of the vase with the deepest value in the middle to show close proximity to me, along with the reflection of the dark carpet as seen before with the pan.

At the front of the composition, this apple needs its tone pushed to show its proximity to me; I used my 5B for the deep tone, along with its rougher texture that pushes the spotty nature of apple skin. I used some directional hatching to depict this pattern too.

From here, I developed the glass on my own. I darkened the top half, where the carpet would be seen through it to give an implication of a background, but I was allowed to omit the background itself since the focus is on the objects. I didn't keep this area consistently dark, base highlights do show in the centre of the bottle where light is reflected and clouds over the shadows within.

I also made sure to follow the ideology of patterns where foreshortening brings their marks closer together with distance, along with shading the separate planes of the towel draped over the cube to give them distinction and actually felt as though it were sitting on an object. This was helped by keeping the corners light, which shows how fabric tends to fold outwards on corners. With that complete, I started applying tone to the background.