Draw and select

Introduction

I looked through all the work I have completed for this course and realised that it was a difficult choice for assignment 5.  I kept swinging back and forth to different options, finding something I really liked in each and something less pleasing in others.  In the end, I decided to go for Observation in nature.  I readily had objects to draw and find the subject matter interesting.

I also spend a lot of time taking photographs and when I looked through my library, found that a large majority focused on nature, flowers, animals etc..

Draw and select

I decided that I was going to spend a lot of time on this assignment to give the best of my ability.  I do like drawing with colour pencils and feel quite happy with this medium so I started with a still life drawing of an iris (bought from the florist).  Having sketched the overall shape and shaded areas looking at the real flower I then finished the coloured details from photographs.

This drawing took at least 3 hours to complete and although I am quite happy with the finished result I feel that I made a big mistake in the colour shading.  After lightly drawing the outlines I blocked in colour areas so I could added detailed shading along the way.  This was my mistake as the block colours were already too dark and made it difficult to pull back afterwards.  I used Caran d’ache luminance pencils which are very soft.  I spent a lot of time with the sharpener as I can only seem to get the desired effect with very sharp pencils.  I found the paper saturated quite quickly which was also frustrating.  I will try different paper qualities as I work through this assignment.

My next drawing was of a pepper in graphite pencil.  For this I used an HB pencil throughout.  This was an intense exercise having to look so carefully at the pepper on the table in front of me.  I sketched the overall outline and then an outline for each different zone of tone or texture.  The pressure on the pencil was so light that it hardly made a mark but by doing this I was able to build up tone and keep sufficient light in the drawing.  I really enjoyed doing this drawing although it was a painstakingly slow exercise.

I like detail and smaller drawings which has not been easy throughout this course as so many exercises have required a large format.

Having completed this exercise I then decided to try the same pepper in watercolour.  This is a medium that I adore but am not at all proficient with.  I think I overworked it and flooded areas with too much colour.  I also think I started with the colours too pale and then struggled to add shadows in a coherent way.  I really need to work more in this medium and practice layering colours.  It was fun to do but also frustrating as I messed up quite a bit.

I then moved on to other objects some of which I worked from photos.  The cherries and mushrooms were from photos; the pine cone one of hundreds from the garden and the artichoke a photo.  These sketches were also worked in detail.  I used the Luminance colours for the cherries and a mix of graphite pencils for the mushrooms.

I feel that I have made progress with detailed work and much prefer this to rough sketching.

It was interesting working on different objects with such diverse textures, from the smooth surface of the cherries to the ragged detail of the pine cone.  I really enjoyed the slow building up of colour and shade on the cherries and the detail of the mushrooms more so than the fir cone.

My final studies in this section included various views of apples.  I filled a page using different mediums and view points but quickly decided this would not be my final choice of object.  I liked trying to get the rounded feel and grain of the skin but otherwise it wasn’t such an interesting choice.

All of the above studies were produced indoors with natural light and not a direct lamp light and although the artichoke here is my least favourite drawing I choose it as my object for the final assignment because there is such rich colour and variation in shape and form.