Observational Drawing

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

Project Goals:

• Learn about artists who work to use mark-making to show volume in their drawings

• Learn and refine observational drawing skills, including contour drawing, perspective, value, measuring, proportion, and placement of objects

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

Reflection:

The artist that most influenced me was Henry Moore. Specifically, his hand drawings. In most projects I studied him, so I learned a lot about his technique and how interesting it was. For his hand drawings, he uses hatching and cross-hatching to create value and perspective in his drawing. His lines curve around the object, showing that it isn’t completely straight. I thought that made the object look very real and also make it look like you could just grab it. So I tried to incorporate that into my work. I saw improvement in many things. One of those things being cylinders. For me, cylinders were really hard because I didn’t know how to make it look round but not like a circle, also trying to make it look life like. Then I realized I could use the shadows and lines to show it was round by rounding the lines out around the cylinder.  I also saw a lot of improvement in my shading. At the beginning, I had no idea where to add shading and if I did, I would just guess on how much or where it's going. Also, anything that looked white, I would just assume it was just plain white and no shadowing. I learned that even if something looks like it has no shadowing, there is usually a bit of value everywhere.