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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:
I would describe the marks that I used to show value in my drawing as cross hatching. I used lines that were perpendicular to one another to create a sense of uniformity. The lines that overarch an entire object or area make it feel like it's all part of one thing. But the smaller lines create a sense of value and depth, adding variation throughout the drawing. This technique is also the one that Vincent Van Gogh used. He used cross hatching often to give lots of depth to his realistic pieces. This marking helped me to create value changes because it gave me several different directions of lines to give. So I could use the lines in one direction for the darker areas, and then phase those lines out, keeping the other direction the same value, to make a smooth gradient of values. I could also use this technique to make contrast by spreading out both directions of lines.
I notice that in my original drawing, all of the objects look like they're on different planes. Since this time, I've learned how to make sure all of the objects are being seen from the same perspective. I have also learned how to ground the objects by putting shadows underneath them so they don't look like they're floating. Another thing that I notice in my pre-instructional drawing is that there is very little contrast between different objects. I've now learned that it is important to use contrast instead of lines to define between objects. Another thing that I've learned from this unit is that placing your angles and ellipses is very important in creating a convincing still life. I learned from the one point perspective piece of the unit and when we practiced cylinders, how to make good angles of different 3D shapes.
Pre-instructional drawing
There are many necessary skills to create a convincing still life drawing. One of them is a wide range of values throughout your piece. Not only does this create a good sense of variety throughout the entire drawing, but it also helps with depth. Having a lot of values between black and white gives all of the objects different depths, and helps to highlight how close or far away an object is. Another important skill is being able to create a good sense of contrast or definition without making lines. In real life, there aren't lines around every object, giving it definition from things near it. So when you're making a still life, there should also be no lines, as to keep with realism. Because of this, you need to have the skills to define objects using contrast, without outlining objects. Another skill that I think is necessary is being able to use perspective well. The making of a still life includes making many angles and ellipses. This is an important skill because the realism of your piece depends on how well you do the angles and ellipses. The final skill that I think is important is being able to learn from how other artists work. We did an exercise in which we copied another artist’s piece to see how they worked. It is not only important to be able to do this in the first place, but its also important to be able to learn a lot from these types of exercises.
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