Final Still Life Drawing

Essential Question: 

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

Purposes:

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 used stippling, so I learned from the work of past students and Ms. Sylvester. This actually made the project more interesting, because it offered fewer restraints on my work. 

I think the largest improvement that I made during this unit is how to use value to show light levels and depth perception. In my original drawing, I used value to represent the light level and color of objects. After the unit, I learned color was pretty irrelevant, and that I should use value to my advantage, to represent the light level and show more depth in the drawing.

Four things are needed to make a convincing still life drawing; light levels, perspective, scale, and shapes. Light level is important because it can help show which areas of the drawing have greater value than others as well as define the borders of objects without outright drawing them, which is very important when you’re using stippling like I was. Perspective is important because it can show where the light source is, as well as show where the artist is when drawing their still-life. If the artist drew the piece from five different angles, then the perspective would be thrown off and the viewer wouldn’t be able to make out the objects and their light levels. Scale is important because it shows how far apart the objects are. Even if an artist sat in the same spot while making their still life, they could lean forward and think an object is larger than it actually is, throwing off the whole piece. Also, if you can’t get up close near the thing you’re drawing (like we couldn’t) then scale can help artists draw things larger than they see them. Finally, shapes can help the artist get a basis for what they are working with. We worked on this in the upside-down drawing, but it is important to break objects down into their core shapes, so that way you can base everything else that is part of the object off of the fundamental shapes that are made of.