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:

For my final still-life, I chose to depict my drawing with the use of the cross-hatching technique commonly used by Henry Moore. I preferred this art style because I believe it suits my sketching process best as it aligns with my way of drawing bold line sketches that come together. Using cross-hatching allows me to add value in an abstract and controlled manner. It helps me express myself and allows me to focus on my model with more attention to detail so I can accurately reflect it in a cross-hatching form. With this method of sketching, I was able to experiment with positive and negative space by starting light and then gradually adding darker value which I found was the best form of representation for my still-life.

Through my experience with this project, I learned that there are many important things to consider when trying to draw a convincing still-life. One aspect I primarily focused on for this assignment is value. Getting the value of my objects to match my theme of cross-hatching was important. As well as working on making sure the object’s value doesn’t blend in with the object’s surroundings so it stands out as its own shape. Another skill I find important is perspective and making sure your still-life looks 3D. This is done by paying attention to depth while making it give off the illusion of having three-dimensional angles with the space used. Each object should have the same perspective throughout to help identify what the specific object is and that it’s in place with everything else. Not only is the still-life’s perspective important, but also your perspective is crucial when drawing. Making sure you stay in the same spot while working will prevent the process from being more challenging since not having a consistent viewpoint may throw off the look of the drawing. A third skill I believe to be necessary is making sure your proportions look realistic and match the overall drawing. If the objects in the still-life don’t have reliable proportions when compared to the rest of the drawing, it will throw it off balance and make it stand out as uneven. Lastly, one of the biggest lessons to remember is when drawing a still-life is that lighting is significant as it can influence the whole outcome of whether your drawing is realistic or not. This is in regards to the lamp’s light specifically that brings the color out of the objects, but in still-life’s case, brings out the value of each object. I believe that lighting brings my drawing to life as the light source placement that represents the lamp’s brightness cast upon the objects makes it visually level. When working on adjusting lighting, remember to not sketch too dark too fast and keep in mind the use of positive and negative space. Light space is valuable and can become darker but you can’t undo dark markings.