Final Still Life Drawing

Essential Question: What are the necessary skills to create a convincing still life drawing?

Purpose:

• To create a still-life drawing that demonstrates understanding of angles & ellipses in perspective, along with using a chosen and conscious mark-making technique to describe form;

• To understand value by creating a good range of values between black & white to help make the objects appear 3D;

• To demonstrate quality craftsmanship and good composition skills in a drawing.

Artists Studied: Henry Moore, Giorgio Morandi, Vincent van Gogh, Winslow Homer, John Whalley

Reflection

• To show the value in my still life drawing, I used dark and light slashes to identify the darkness and the lightness of the drawing. The artist technique I used in my drawing was Henry Moore. The technique that he used was cross-hatching. This technique helped create and change value because adding lines together made the value darker and light slashes made the value lighter.

• Comparing my pre-instructional drawing and final still life drawing I notice a big difference. In my pre-instructional drawing, I didn’t make a surface which made drawing the objects difficult. Therefore, when I was making my final still life drawing I made the surface first. Another thing that I learned was outlining, in my pre-instructional drawing, I didn't outline, which made it hard to arrange the objects. Therefore when I went into my final still life drawing I started outlining which helped me a lot because it organized my composition. 

• Personally, I think the necessary skills to make a convincing still life is value, outlines, shapes, and scaling. Values in a still life show the lightness and darkness that helps to identify shadows, light, contours, and highlights. Outlining helps to structure the arrangement of the still life. Identifying the basic shapes in a still life makes the process of drawing one easier. Also scaling helps to make accurate proportions which makes the still life more realistic.