Traditional Art

Week 25 - Interior Composition

This week we were yet again unleashed into a public space, this time Leicester's Guildhall. The Guildhall itself was really interesting. I found it incredibly difficult to not get distracted by all the informative plaques and displays dotted around the site. It was a really good place to choose for an interior drawing as the dark beams contrast against the pale plaster in a really iconic way characteristic of the Tudor period. Although the original building supposedly dates back to the middle ages I chose to focus on the relatively modern 16th century extension.

Thumbnails

Initial sketch

As you can hopefully tell from the sketch I chose to go with my third thumbnail sketch for this piece. I felt that the overall composition was more interesting than any of the one-point perspective compositions. This would allow me to focus more on perspective and structure and less on the final render as more interest could be shown with less detail.

The initial sketch on site proved challenging because the whole building is incredibly wonky and uneven. I couldn't risk putting my pencil down lest it roll away in an escape attempt across the uneven floor.

I started by shading in the basic values from dark to light.

I refined some of the textures and added the chair.

The (almost) final piece.

The final piece. I think the structure is accurate and the perspective works well despite the wonky shape building itself.

One thing I would do to improve would be to refine the texture of the floor some more but conveying the scratchy wood in an accurate way without it being too distracting proved more challenging than I thought.

Looking at this image now I also think I missed out drawing one of the chair legs which is a bizarre point to note. I think in the image I worked from after leaving the hall the chair was quite small and I simply forgot to include the obscured leg. That is definitely the biggest and strangest mistake I have noticed this year. I suppose I will always resolve to count the number of legs on any chair I draw in the future.

I'm going to go back and add in that chair leg because it will only take a minute to fix and it's such an odd exclusion. Besides, a missing chairleg isn't how I want to round out my portfolio for the year.

Final piece (with chair leg restored).

Week 24 - Landscape Composition

For this week we were sent out into the wild (Castle Gardens) to choose an area to draw. Most people seemed to be choosing the church which is something I'm glad I didn't notice until after the fact because I chose to focus on the building adjacent to the church because I found it significantly more interesting.

My initial thumbnail sketch.

The base sketch for my final piece. Getting the angles correct was challenging but once I estimated the placement of the horizon line I found it easier to draw them.

I placed the darkest values first.

I decided to work outwards from the windows, which I felt were effectively the focal point of the image, in the same way we work out from the eyes during a portrait. It just made sense.

I started adding some tertiary details such as the brickwork on the chimney and under the windows.

Continuing to add tertiary detail such as bricks and tiles to the roof.

The finished piece.

In a drawing like this there's so much variety and it's so easy to break down into managble sections. I think that's why I enjoy drawing landscapes like this so much and as a result probably also why I think they're my best pieces. There is still plenty I could do to improve such as increasing the detail on the lower wall, or adding more contrast between the different directions of wall based off which ones were getting more/less direct light but overall I think this piece turned out really well.

Week 23 - Life Drawing Head Construction pt. 2

I was struggling to convey the character in the thumbnails but I decided that instead of wasting time I would move on to the main drawing. The most important thing was to make sure the composition would work and that the portrait was framed correctly and I think achieved this regardless.

After feedback I shortened the nose and increased the size of the ear. I also brought the jacket up as it was too far down and was making the neck look far too long. I think I left beginning to shade a bit late as it was hard to gauge proportions correctly without the shadows to demonstrate form.

I began shading with long strokes mainly because I was rushing to get tone down. After feedback I tried to use shorter hatching strokes. This looks much neater and less like a I'm just colouring in. This was the state of the piece after the lesson but I plan to go back and refine the shading some more later on.

The finished portrait.

I think that this piece is definitely an improvement on my previous portraits. I think there is more character conveyed and the addition of some smaller and more patient hatching really increased the quality of my shading.

Conversely I regret smudging the clothes. I just wanted to lay down a rough tone to fill the area and in a rush it now detracts from the final piece I think.

In terms of structure I found this side angle more challenging that the more direct views I have drawn before. Drawing the obscured eye and getting the nose angle correct were both things I hadn't had to consider as much previously.

My pace for this piece also improved as it was mainly finished during the life drawing session itself with only minor shading and tertiary details left to add to later.

Overall I'm pleased with the end result and I think it bears a good resemblance to the model. In fact I know it does because a friend on mine recongised him as from also being a model for her class at NTU!

Week 22 - Self Portrait

Artist research:

"Self-Portrait with Velvet Beret and Furred Mantle", Rembrandt.

I like oil painting. If I had more time, money, and space I would oil paint my portrait for this project but currently that seems impractical so I will opt for the much more sensible medium of coloured pencils. When it came to choosing an artist however I still chose to focus on Rembrandt. While I can't use the paint I can use his mimic style of lighting. The Rembrandt Triangle is a commonly used term to refer to the lighter triangle beneath the eye when the face is lit from a particular side angle but using the triangle directly felt a bit generic, so I instead wanted to focus on the dramatic half and half style lighting seen in the portrait on the left. Often we draw the lit side of the face and leave the further away side in shadow but I wanted to flip that and work with my main focus on the shadow-side. Obviously I will keep the contrast low so details can still be seen even in the darker areas - I don't think a chia-scuro style set up would be particularly helpful, but overall that dichotomy is what I'm aiming for.

"Portrait of a young woman", Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

Now because I'm not working in oil paint and leaving it to age for centuries I don't think I will be able to mimic the colour pallete of a Rembrandt piece, but that's where I would like to reference this portrait of a young woman. I think this painting emphasizes the commonly seen colour zones of the face where the forehead is more yellow, the cheeks more red, and the chin more blue. While I don't want to waste time on a background to the portrait I do want to include a warm/cool contrast as seen in this piece. Based off of my photos I will decide where to emphasize this most, but I'm hoping to be able to set up the lighting in such a way as to provide a clear warm/cool divide across the lit and shaded areas. I don't think I have the confidence in my own artistic license to just imagine that kind of implied lighting without a proper reference, at least not yet, but worst case scenario I could potentially just make the contrast between the warm colour of my hair vs cool toned skin more prominent to achieve a similar effect.

I used the Drawing Centre facilities to set up a nice lighting rig and got my friend to take some photos of me under the lights. Fortunately, I'm too wise to put high-resolution images of my face on the internet so I wont be sharing them here. Luckily they were only used for lighting reference as for the actual sketch I drew from my reflection in a mirror. This proved especially challenging as I am incapable of sitting still, even for my own benefit, even more so when I have to keep looking up and down and back and forth at a drawing. As a result my initial sketch seen below turned out terribly, but it's always better to have something terrible on paper (which can be fixed) than a blank sheet.

Creating my self-portrait:

All good drawings start off as terrible ones but you can't fix mistakes if the page is empty. My initial sketch looks more like a high elf from Skyrim than me but it was a start. Drawing from a mirror proved challenging but I thought it would be an interesting change of pace.

After some refinement it looked slighly more like me but still wasn't right so I asked for feedback. I think I had drawn the nose too long and eyes too high which is something I need to be more aware of because I'm doing it consistently. I also think that the eyes are skewed rather than lying on a straight line which makes the whole face feel distorted.

After feedback I shortened the nose and brought the chin up. I was also told to bring the back of the head out to add more brain space. The lips were also angled straight on despite the face being turned so I increased the foreshortening so they matched the rest of the face better.

My initial plan for the colour medium was to use coloured pencils but I don't think I will like the result. My new idea is to lay down a base of tone using watercolours and then use the coloured pencil to add texture and increase the saturation and contrast in areas like the eyes and hair.

At this point I genuinely believed this portrait was the worst thing I had ever seen. I had no rational reason I just thought it was awful and so I did something I don't think I had done at all this year and decided to start again.

However my restarted portrait in just pencil was decidedly boring and erring on the side of stylization. Deferring to popular vote in class I decided to go back to my original portrait and try to work with it.

At this point I still hated it but conceded it was technically a better piece than I was on track to make with my redo. I used blues and purples to add some shadows and detail around the key features. I think I forgot how much shadows impact the proportions of the face, and how strange it was guaranteed to look with only a pale wash of watercolour.

Now I was starting to feel pleased with the portrait again and I began to see the resemblance vaguely. I focused on implying the colour zones of the face by adding some yellow to lit areas across the forehead, adding some warmth to the cheeks and using blue to cool the shadows of the chin and jaw. I also plan to darken the brow shadows a bit more.

The finished self-portrait.

I have mixed feelings about this piece. I think my completely ill-advised and uneducated leap into watercolours left me panicking about the final result when I had barely started. I can recognise now though that it is an okay portrait and I think the colours and lighting I chose were a pleasing combination overall. The technical accuracy of the portrait is good as I think the proportions are accurate according to feedback. Given the chance again, although I should have chosen a medium I was more confident in like oil paint, I think I would still choose to make this portriat. Ironically as the biggest percieved mess-up I've made in this module it's also taught me the most. Firstly, to trust the process, but also that good art doesn't mean making the exact thing you envisioned when you started out.

Week 21 - Life Drawing Head Construction pt. 1

I had the eyes positioned and proportioned correctly but I had drawn the mouth as if it was facing directly forwards and the nose slightly skewed too. I learned not to outline the lips and that I should rely on shading the forms rather than a hard line otherwise it looks like makeup.

I started shading around the eyes and built tone outwards moving on to the other darkest areas such as the nostrils and ears.

As I continued shading I realised I wasnt differentiating enough between secondary and tertiary detail. I needed to put more focus on the overall structure and less on the personal details, at least to begin with, or risk getting stuck working on small details before I had a proper base to build on.

I added some implied detail to the clothes but I think any more shading would just distract from the main focal point of the face. At this point I decided that the direction of some of my hatching was wrong and was creating confusion about the form so I changed that. I also needed to darken some shadows wuch as under the nose and around the eyes.

I rounded off the shape off the back of the skull slightly and added more tertiary detail to the skin. I think the character comes across really well despite some minor structural issues with the chin and ear. I'm pleased with how it turned out but next time I would definitely reduce how heavily I drew my outline around the head and facial features.

The final portrait.

Considering this was the first portrait I've ever drawn from life I think it was a success. It looks accurate to the model and I believe it communicates a sense of character somewhat. The most challenging part of this portrait was working within the time limit as I needed to get enough information down within the 3 hour session so that I didn't need an image to work from to complete the final details.

The most important thing I learnt from this piece was the importance of shading as I progress not waiting until the whole sketch is complete. I think that laying down key shadows such as under the brow, nose and mouth is really important for assessing whether or not the proportions are correct. This is something I will try to take forwards into the next portrait task as it will improve the pace at which I can work.

Overall I'm pleased with how the final portrait looks. I didn't spend much time or attention on rendering the clothes as I thougt they were irrelevant to the task at hand but reflecting now I think a but more care in that area whould have helped the piece feel more complete and whole.

Week 20 - Head Construction/Plaster Head

This week was focused on constructing the head. In preparation for the lesson I reviewed the online resources to practice a combination of the Loomis and Reilley methods of constructing the head. I've also been studying from Anatomy for Sculptors and Form of the Head and Neck by Uldis Zarins which has been helpful in providing a 3D artists perspective. I decided to pratice the head construciton activity on blackboard before the lesson so I had an idea of what I would be doing in the following lesson.

The basic Loomis lines. The most helpful part of this construction was that it emphasises the plane on the side of the skull as well as correctly places the line of the back of the nose.

The Reilley lines were more helpful for linking the facial features together rather than just correctly placing them on the face.

Another thing interesting about this method is drawing is placing the eye sockets before the eyes. I think this makes drawing the foreshortening of the further eye easier.

For a small thumbnail I think this drawing turned out fairly well in terms of structure and character. I'm going to try and reuse this technique in the lesson.

I chose a mostly forwards-facing perspective for the first drawing. The interesting thing about this plaster head was that half of it is faceted so shading it is going to be fun.

I used hatching to shade the head as it had a very smooth texture. I think the most important shadow is the one which rests under the lips because without it the whole lower half of the face looks flat.

I've noticed a habit of rushing my hatching - I tend to use very long rough lines to shade in large areas rather than taking my time. This is valuable in that it allows me to communicate a planes form fast but it means I often leave areas lacking in detail and overly flat.

For the second drawing I chose a side view of the same head to get some practice at another angle. The Loomis lines were more useful in drawing from this perspective but I still skewed the nose. I think I also made the ear too long and dropped the jaw as a result.

My rendering for this piece was even messier than normal because I was focusing on covering the area in the shortest amount of time, but I think the structure is still communicated effectively. I would like to neaten it up to improve the overall impact.

I decided to add some dark hatching to help the head stand out more, which I think really improved the overall impact of the piece.

I think that I communicated the structure of the face well overall. I followed the method I learnt from the PowerPoint on blackboard roughly, removing some of the structural lines I thought were less necessary especially given the rigid proportions of the plaster head. Some of the proportions were slightly off - the nose looks a lot smaller now that it's shaded. Overall I think this has been a good practice for the life drawing with models that I will be doing in the coming weeks. My only concern is on timing as I will have to speed up my initial sketch as portraiture seems to be less about the initial sketch, much more information is conveyed in the rendering I think compared to the still life.

Drawing Centre - Life Drawing & Curriculum session

For the last month I have been going to weekly life drawing sessions hosted for us by Chris at the drawing centre. I decided to condense everything I had learned into one blog post rather than spread it out through out the weeks as it is the same sort of topics being focused on each time. Before this I had never drawn with a life model before, any portraits or character art I had always referenced images online, so this was a new skill for me. Despite my apprehension I wanted to make the most of this so I attended every session put on for our class.

Week 1:

A very rough 1 minute contour line drawing. Right-handed, no looking at hte page.

Another even rougher contour line drawing, right-handed, no looking at the page.

A left-handed one minute contour sketch (with no looking at the page). I find it interesting that my lines are less accurate but more confident in my lesser used hand.

Another left-handed sketch. I think my right hand could learn a few things about boldness from my left.

Some 5 minute pose sketches.

10 minute sketch with value.

20 minute sketch with value.

Week 2:

1 minute single line figure drawings with right and left hand

More 1 minute single-line drawings, alternating between right and left hands. I really enjoy this activity specifically because of the really short time limit and the challenge of using your off hand to draw and not looking at the page while doing it.

A lcollection of 5 minute pose sketches

10 minute sketch

20 minute challenge sketch - using a sitting pose gave me a chance to practice foreshortening and placing objects correctly on planes.

Week 3:

1 minute contour sketches, right and left hand.

More 1 minute contour sketches, right and left hand.

5 minute pose

20 minute pose

Week 4:

More 1 minute contour sketches. I think at this point the biggest improvement I can see is in the confidence of my lines. It's become much harder to tell the left and right handed drawings apart.

10 minute sketch.

10 minute sketch

20 minute sketch with focus on value.

In summary, life drawing is really challenging and very taxing overall. Having to focus so intensely on a time limit all in one go was a really good excersise and I'm so glad I went to the sessions. There was usually only a couple of us in attendence so we had a lot of freedom to request specific tasks or challenges. The quick drawings were my favourite to do. I think the short time-span forced me to really break down a shape and pick out the most important parts that were needed to convey it accurately.

There are a lot of issues with my drawings in all the weeks but I think I have definitely improved over the course of the month. Without these sessions I think I'd be a lot more nervous going into the portrait sessions in class in the coming weeks, regardless of the fact I focused on figure drawing this time round. Overall I'm really impressed with how it has gone and I would really like to do this again if more sessions are run in the future as the confidence and skills it helped build are something I really appreciate.

In-Curriculum Session: Composition and Anatomy

This session was split into two parts - the first thing we studied was some basic anatomy. After running through a PowerPoint, looking at some medical models and taking a lot of written notes, I remembered that this is an art course not a biology lesson and decided to spend some time drawing limbs from reference and trying to place and label how the bones and muscles would sit beneath the visible surface. I thought it would be easier to do it this way rather than building the muscle on top of the bone (even though that would make more sense logically) because I'm obviously more familiar with what an arm looks like from the outside.

The second part of the session was focused on some more advanced compositional techniques compared to the standard triangular, L shaped and rule of thirds set up. What I found most interesting about this part of the lesson was the amount of maths involved in all the ratios which people have derrived from pleasing compositions. I often wonder to what degree the rules of composition are grounded in logic and not just the worlds biggest case of confirmation bias, but overall I found this information really helpful.

The most useful thing I have learned form this is how to derrive a root rectangle and make an armature on any size canvas. As well as this I know we should stick to the standard 16:9 ratio in most of out work, but now I know why to some degree as well. I also found it interesting how a 21:9 ratio is being used more and more in modern cinema. The mathematical implications of these ratios are interesting but I wonder if there have been studies into whether the perception of good or bad composition is influenced by biological or psychological mechanisms. I am going to research that.

I, very briefly, have researched that. I wondered whether the common aspect ratios were linked to the actual field of view the typical human has and the results I found were fun to come up with but likely coincidental as I have no real evidence to base this on. Working off of these measurements it seems to be that the average binocular human FOV, including peripheral vision, i.e things we aren't focused on, is roughly 220° wide and 130° high. 220/135 is 1.69 to 3sf and 16/9 to 3sf is 1.78. That's about a 5% difference, with the cinematic aspect ratio having a bit more visual space than the average human view. I find that interesting for some reason, maybe the reason we have settled on this as a satisfying aspect ratio for film is that it largly mimics our own experience, with a bit of padding so the cinema curtains at the edge of the screen doesnt distract you. Even more interestingly the old 4:3 ratio which was used more commonly in the mid 20th century, before widescreen became the default in the early 2000s, is more similar to the monocular portion of vision, meaning the field of view of one eye only. This is roughly 180° by 135°, which divides to 1.33, equivalent to the 4:3 ratio of old TVs. I wonder if this has had an impact on the level of immersion in film, now that modern screens try to consume more of our peripheral vision. I wonder whether the impact of screen ratio has had an impact on making games feel more immersive over the years in addition to the obvious advances elsewhere in graphical technology. I expect this kind of research is more useful for the developers of VR games where you really do have to fill the entire field of view of the player.

Week 19 - Drapery Self Guided Study

I used a set up in the classroom for this task because I struggled to find anything suitable by myself to use.

I've been using the book Dynamic Wrinkles and Drapery by Burne Hogarth for my digital project work but all that I've learn about the types of folds applies here.

The most important thing for me to pay attention to this drawing is communicating the differences in thickness and weight between the two types of fabric. I think I achieved this well but there isn't enough of a tonal difference between the two fabrics so I'm going to go back and make the thinner fabric darker.

The final outcome of this piece was better than I expected. I think studying the drapery book I got from the library helped in that I could name the types of fold seen in the set up. The thin fabric is just draped over the chair so is mostly composed of drop folds with some pipe-shaped elements, where as the thicker fabric is folded over itself giving my favourite kind of fold, a half-lock fold, on the left.

In order to improve this piece I think I would have tried to blend out the values in the folds more as in the thin fabric a lot of the demarkations lokk just like lines rather than shadows reflective of a curving form. Other than that I think my understanding and confidence around drawing drapery has massively improved through this task, especially given that I hadn't ever drawn a set up like this or fabric so dynamic before.

Week 18 - Value

The key for a good value read in composition is contrast. I wanted to make sure that there weren't too many areas of similar value overlapping which was an issue I ran into in week 16.

As well as this, in order to create an interesting compositional silhouette I shortened the height of the flower and altered the angle of the leaf. I then also changed the direction the apple stalk was pointing so that it wasn't leading the eye off the page and instead fed back into an looping path.

Creating the initial sketch was fairly straight forwards but I needed to make sure the objects all looked like they were sitting on the same ground plane. In the first thumbnail I got this wrong and it created an impossible arrangement where the die would have been clipping in to the jug. I think the composition works well overall. It's a simple triangular composition but placing the objects at increasing depths and heights has helped add more interest to the scene. I think the variety in textures will also help as long as I manage to convey them effectively.

Final sketch with more detail on the flowerhead. Drawing the petals accurately at this stage was crucial to shading them correctly. They are such a light tone that without a good sketch I think it would be really difficult to get the form accurate.

At this stage it was starting to look good but the metal on the cup needed more attention. The dramatic shadows and highlights were needed to communicate the reflectiveness of the surface and differentiate it from the wood beneath it.

I'm very pleased with the end result of this peice. I think it shows a clear development in my understanding of value compared to the similar task in week 16.

Week 17 - New Walk Museum

My first four thumbnails of creatures from the museum. These thumbnails were all of creatures I found interesting but the first three really lack any depth in the way they're framed so I knew I would be drawing something else. The turkey skeleton was my current favourite but rendering a bird skeleton wasn't appealing to me, I wanted a more interesting material.

For the next two thumbnails I looked at a turtle skull and a small beetle. Unfortunately I thought both of these items were too small and so wouldn't give me enough detail to work on during my render. I decided to try another thumbnail, this time of a more intersting but potentially challenging subject.

Thumbnail #6 - this was of the skull of cod. I had misjudged the framing but I redrew the frame around the sketch so I had a better impression of placement for my final drawing.

A drawing over the image I worked from; I used this to help me pick out the shapes in areas where they become less distinct.

Skull of Cod - Final piece.

I think I definitely made the right choice for what to draw from the museum. It was a really fun challenge trying to render the iridescence of the fish's cartilage/bone material.

The structure of the skull required me to create an armature of sorts by digitally drawing over an image to create basic reference shapes for myself, as seen in the image above. I first got the angles right by copying down the red outline and then used that as the basis for fitting in all the individual bones like a puzzle. The main thing I don't think I conveyed accurately was the overall value range. The material is mostly white but I found myself artificially increasing the value range of some lit areas as I was drawing. I think this does detract from the overall bone-likeness but other than that I think the rendering was successful.

I wonder if in future drawing something like this on a non-white paper would produce a more successful result. That way I could use a white pencil to bring out areas which are lighter with more success. I used to draw with white pencil on black paper quite a lot, as well as with colours on tan paper so maybe next year I will go back to using a wider range of media.

Week 16 - Composition

Thumnails of composition ideas.

This week was focused on composition. We had a set of objects and the freedom to arrange them in our drawing differently to how they were placed on the table.

Of my two favourite thumbnail sketches I chose to draw the blue one for my final piece. I think I liked the red one because of the narrative implications of an onion wearing a cup for a hat. While it would have been fun to draw, I think the blue thumbnail will prove more technically challenging because of the different levels and stacking.

My initial sketch had several structural issues, particularly with the box and kettle where inconsistent amounts of the top faces were visible leading the whole thing to feel skewed. This was easily fixed by changing the ellipticals on the kettle and relaxing the corner of the box.

Base sketch.

Partially shaded progress picture.

I decided to change the rotation of the jug so that the handle was more clearly separated from the rest of the silhouette. I think this helped the composition overall and reduced the visual confusion any foreshortening in that area may have created.

I also decided to draw a cloth underneath the objects because I thought it was necessary to balance the composition and ground it on the page. I will have to research some basic references to build from because there was nothing draped in the original scene. I have borrowed a book from the library called Dynamic Wrinkles and Drapery for the character project in digital art so I'm hoping to apply some of the information I learn from that.

One thing I noticed while doing this drawing is how much faster and more accurately I have become able to draw these objects. Some of these I had drawn before in term 1 but now I could really see an improvement in my own construction technique.

At this stage in my drawing I think I was starting to get ahead of myself and render material before form but I caught it early enough that I was able to fix it before it started looking too strange. I think the structure of all the items is strong and whether or not the piece is a success is going to be determined by the values which this task is focusing on.

The final piece turned out okay but I think the values of the darker onion, cup, and jug are too similar and make the piece difficult to read. It does really affect the depth of the piece by having all the aspects blur into one in the middle. I think the only way to fix this would be to alter the values to add more contrast. This is something I will try and be more aware of in the future when arranging set ups. Composition isn't just impacted by the forms but also the values of the objects and how they interact with each other.

Week 15 - Shading Techniques

Self Guided Work:

The six techniques I tested were hatching, smudging, cross hatching, stippling, circling and scribbling. The final drawing of a kiwi was rendered using a combination of the above techniques.

The point of this task was to explore the different shading techniques and mediums. I tried to pick appropriate objects for each shading technique but I think the scribbles would have been better suited to a fuzzy or more textured object as opposed to the smooth surface of the tomato.

While the stippling of the strawberry using pen was my favourite it was also the most impractical and time consuming so I don't think I'll be using that technique regularly. I think the hatching was the neatest and most effective at conveying form and the circles gave the best impression of depth and texture. I think a combination of the two would be very effective so I'm going to focus on using them predominantly in the next object which will use a combination of multiple techniques.

Classwork:

The initial blocking out stage. This term I am really trying to focus on a top down approach so I don't have major placement issues like I did last term.

Refining the blocks using symmetry and ellipses for the jug. Looking back at this image I can see the skewing which I later got help to fix.

I tried to use hatching for this piece as I think my habit of smudging is limiting my range of values.

I focused on adding the basic form shading such as the direction and core shadow first.

The finished piece turned out quite well. I think the shadow beneath the basket is too dark - it's hard to tell from the photo but I think that a cast shadow on a light surface would still be lighter than the darker material of the jug. I think the overall structural accuracy is good, definitely an improvement on my work from last term.

Week 9 - Value and Shading

This week I purposely wanted to try a new kind of shading. Normally I do a combination of the colouring in/smudging method but I'm here to learn! I decided to try and practice cross hatching because it's something I hadn't tried before and it looked like really quick and effective way of communicating form.

I tried to emphasize the value changes in my thumbnail to help with picturing the composition. I tried shading the air next to the white jug to help it stand out from the background. The contact shadows were also really important to helping the objects feel like they were placed properly which is something I have neglected over the past few weeks by focusing on the technical aspects.

I used a combination of all the techniques from previous weeks to complete the sketch for this composition. For the apple, pear, and cup I mainly used ellipses; for the jug, box and pot I used volumetric boxes. Using these techniques in combination made the overall process much easier and quicker than I found drawing similar scenes at the start of the year.

The feedback I got while doing this sketch was that some of my top planes looked like they were in a different perspective than the rest of the image. This was likely because I was swapping between working from a photo and the physical objects in front of me. This was a fairly easy fix and I altered some of the ellipses to shift the planes so I less of the surface was visible. This also helped place the cup and apple better - it looked more like the were sat on the surface rather than just drawn on top.

Cross-hatching

I asked for some help with how to approach the shading and the different methods and these were the examples. I definitely thought the first method was the most effective which was a combination of really small cross hatched lines.

One important thing I learned was that the lines don't cross like an X; the angle between them should be much smaller. Both lines lie on the same surface and their purpose is to communicate the direction of that surface so they need to flow in roughly the same direction. This was also emphasized in the last cube - you can see the lines go in different directions following the direction of the plane. This method made a lot of sense to me and even though I wasn't familiar with it and I hadn't used it before I really wanted to try it because it's so much more effective.

My first shading pass

At this point I had laid down most of the shading and understood basic cross-hatching technique. The feedback at this point was that the core-shadow on the pear needed emphasizing and some more tonal variation was needed - everything was very grey.

Initially I had tried to render the metal tin in the wrong order, starting with the stripes and reflections without having set down the basic form. It looked nothing like the actual object so I asked for help and ended up erasing what I had and starting with basic cylindrical form shading and then worried about conveying the metallic properties later.

Week 9 - final piece

Here's the final piece for week 7. I like crosshatching, I think it is really good at communicating the direction of planes so I am going to use it in the future.

I think I over-shaded the white objets, leaving them too dark and grey looking compared to the original material. This was especially challenging where the white cup overlaps the white jug - I'm not sure how best to render this so I am planning to research or test out different ways of rendering white on white ready for next time.

As for the other objects I think they turned out well but the lack of contact shadows is off-putting. There weren't clear shadows in the image and I don't yet have the confidence to ray-trace and place them myself but next time I think it is something that would help the piece feel more grounded.

I think the apple and pear are the most effectively shaded. The metal tin looks a little bit distorted due to the angle of the crosshatching I chose but I did learn to prioritize form and render material second.

Week 8 - Ellipses and Symmetry

This week we focused on ellipses and how they can help build up the structure of a round 3D form accurately. Symmetry was a key focus which we used to prevent the forms from looking skewed, distorted or off balance.

The composition I chose had a variety of different shapes I could use as good practice of the ellipses technique. This composition was especially challenging as a result of the bottle lying on its side, which was something I struggled with in an earlier piece during week 5.

As a result of my learning from week 5 I wanted to pay particular attention to the ellipse of the lying bottle as this was what was least successful before.

My first thumbnail was good and gave me a clear idea of how I needed to block out the scene. However, I did fail to account for the added height of the sticks so I ended up having to shorten these in my final image compared to the length they were in reality. This wasn't detrimental to the composition as sticks can be any length, but it's something I know I need to be aware of because if it was a bottle that needed to be shortened or squished then altering the form wouldn't be a possible solution and I would have had to start again.

My thumbnail and the initial blocking of shapes using ellipses and volumetric boxes (Week 5). Note that the bottle necks are skewed and not symmetrical.

I received feedback that my symmetry wasn't right - everything seemed skewed to the right slightly (which I now think is due to the angle I was looking at my page at). As a result of the feedback I adjusted my center lines to be more accurate by drawing crosses and finding where they meet. I then used volumetric boxes to reconstruct the necks of the bottles which is where most of the issues were and this definitely improved the overall balance of the piece.

After refining the forms and erasing the construction lines I began to add tone to refine the piece. I will continue to build up the forms by shading and rendering although the abundance of glass and metal materials will likely prove a challenge. I took a photo to work from which I have converted to black and while so I can concentrate only on the value of the different objects and shadows which should aid me in shading the forms.

Since the end of week 8 I have continued to develop tone and even attempted some basic cross hatching in parts of this piece.

The glass of the lying bottle definitely inst rendered as well as I'd like. It lacks the specularity of glass and the neck looks distorted due to the slightly different angle of my shading.

As for the forms themselves I think it is my best attempt so far, the glass bottle is definitely an improvement compared to my attempt in week 5. This time the perspective is more accurate and the ellipses isn't incorrectly distorted as it was previously.

Using symmetry with the ellipses was really helpful in making sure the shapes looked accurate and balanced, however making sure my lines of symmetry are perfectly vertical is something I'm going to have to practice as it took several attempts to get it looking right.

Next time I'm also going to try again to make sure I place my drawing correctly on the page so it doesn't hit the edge of the paper. This is the second time it has happened and even though I've been able to disguise it successfully both times it isn't ideal and it's something I really want to improve.

Week 7 - Orthographic Drawing

This week I had self directed tasks. I had to create an orthographic drawing of a symmetrical object and another one of an asymmetrical object.

I chose not to do thumbnails for these pieces because the technical nature meant that capturing a composition wasn't a major concern and it was more important to convey the shape of an object from different planes of view.

The feedback I have recieved after completing these pieces is that I need to fix the shape of the teapot in the top view - it should be more round and it looks like I have distorted it.

The other feedback I got is that I should start taking line weight into consideration; this isn't something I have thought about much previously. I tend to use the same line quality across my work and this is leading to objects appearing to lack depth and so emphasizing the form using lines is going to be a good way to improve this. I plan to go back to these drawings and alter the consistency of the lines as well as tidying up the overall forms - these are technical drawings and I want that to be reflected. I will also be sure to pay more attention to the quality of my lines in my future work because I want tp improve my visual communication skills without having to fully shade and render.

Week 6 - XYZ Construction Drawing

This week we were looking at objects from an orthographic perspective so we could construct them in the three planes and accurately illustrate it in 3 dimensions. To do this I took images from the rear and side view and used the volumetric construction techniques from last week to build the lamp in the perspective I observed from.

I chose to work from the second thumbnail because it was definitely the most balanced of the three although I was conscious that the arm was not quite angled correctly.

I broke the lamp down into three parts, the base, the arm and the head and gave each part their own box but tried to maintain a consistent perspective between them.

I then used the planes and symmetry to build up the lamp from the base. I ran into issues when I reached the top of the lamp because it was getting really close to the edge of the page. I need to work on blocking out before I start drawing in the specific shapes and not getting ahead of myself.

The feedback at this point was that I needed to fix the angle of the head and make the base bigger as it didn't feel like it had enough weight.

I fixed the perspective of the head and have increased the size of the base so it feels more balanced. I'm going to clean up some of the lines and details and then move on to the second piece. I think for the next one I will choose something with a more solid form so that it is based on a single box rather than the multiple parts of the lamp.

I think this drawing would have been most improved by me blocking it out as a whole at the start. I always approach my thumbnails in this way but for some reason when I get to the larger pieces I become impatient and start detailing before I have everything scaled out.

Once I have finished my other drawing I think I will come back to this one to tidy up the line work as because of my perspective errors there was a lot of erasing which has left the piece feeling messy over all.

Next time I'm planning to start with drawing the boxes for the whole piece and then move on to detailing after making sure everything fits within the frame with a comfortable amount of breathing room in case anything needs adjusting later on. I hope that by doing it like this I will avoid so much erasing of heavy lines and avoid composition errors.

For my second drawing I started with a thumbnail. It was successful and I liked the composition. It seems to be in two point perspective based on the verticals being roughly aligned so that is how I sketched my thumbnail.

I learned from my last drawing so this time I blocked out the whole shape before committing to it. This way I made sure it would fit within the frame and not push towards the edges like my lamp drawing.

Because I was the only one drawing this I was able to rotate the object to get orthographic views of the front, top and side without disturbing anyone else's composition. This was really helpful for drawing the tube details on the middle section. In perspective view it was difficult to tell what angle the surfaces actually had, but by looking from above and to the side it was much easier to block out and then essentially join the dots so it looked correct.

I tidied up the feathery lines and this is my finished piece. I think that there is a slight distortion on the top of the back section - the ellipses looks a bit squashed to me. I think this is due to drawing the initial box with incorrect perspective.

If I was to draw it again I would spend more time on the initial planning out to avoid this kind of mistake - I think because I blocked it out all at once this time I got impatient and didn't measure the angles as thoroughly as I could have.

I have found this method of drawing to be really helpful. I used to think that measuring and constructing would just slow me down but from now on I'm going to be using it all the time. Doing this will allow me to be more purposeful and accurate with my drawings in perspective and will come in especially handy when translating art between 2D and 3D mediums.

Week 5 - Measured Constructive Drawing

This week was focused on measuring and proportion of 3D forms, specifically bottles. We also had the choice of drawing a baby dinosaur as a challenge but I opted for the bottles because I thought it would be more constructive - it's much harder to hide mistakes on a simple form than a complex one. Plus I need to practice my straight lines.

My drawing in progress.

My ability to measure is definitely improving and my pace is increasing too. I constructed each bottle as a cuboid of relative proportions - I measured everything relative to the width of the standing bottle for reference. This meant that everything adhered to a constant scale and so looked proportional. The issue I did run into was I underestimated how far down the lying bottle would reach and so it ended up off my page - in order to fix this I altered the composition in my image which wasn't too difficult as it just meant shifting the box upwards.

The biggest error in this drawing I would want to fix is the perspective of the lying bottle - it is squashed too flat when it should be skinnier. I ended up annotating the edge of the page as a reminder to mention this after I was given the feedback. I also increased the curve on the bottom of the jug as a result of the feedback I got because it was causing to sharp of an angle when there is no angle because the form simply curves around.

With the first bottle I drew, you can see I just drew four boxes of consistent height to split up the form volumetrically. After getting feedback I realised this wasn't particularly helpful and it would be more useful to add additional boxes where the form changes to allow for symmetry to be maintained wherever curves start, stop or change. This improved my technique when I moved on to the other two, more difficult forms.

The finished drawing including my tutors feedback and my notes on the side. The jug handle didn't align with the rest of the jug and so made more sense to be constructed separately, with it's own box.

I only used basic shading on these objects - focusing on communicating the form rather than showing the texture and colour.

This is the finished piece. Overall I found this construction method really helpful but I learned that it is really important to get the perspective of the boxes correct at the start otherwise it will look distorted when the volumes are added, so next time I will pay more attention to this.

Week 4 - Drawing in Queen's building

This week was more on perspective although this time focusing on the complex and really annoying design of the queens building. The options for our drawing tasks we two drawings, one in one point and another in two point perspective, or a single three point perspective drawing. I opted for the single three-point perspective drawing because it's something I wanted to develop more, and doing a single drawing would allow me to focus on one task for the lesson which I would find easier to manage time-wise.

It took me about 10 minutes of wandering around to find a nice spot to sit and draw. I chose a view of the main corridor from a point on the second floor and viewed through a window which added a nice frame to help me focus. After my initial thumbnails I got feedback and learnt that using a grid in these situations can be really helpful so I downloaded an app to grid up my photos and drew the same grid on my page so I could measure more accurately.

The spot where I set myself up, looking up through the window.

My first angle - not dramatic enough for good perspective practice.

My final reference photo, gridded up for accuracy.

My thumbnails and my rough idea of where the vanishing points would be.

The improvement between the first and second in terms of the perspective is why I chose the second composition. Sketching it out small enough that I could visualise where the vanishing points were was really informative for developing my final piece because it allowed me to get a good idea of the angles and where my lines would need to converge to.

Some other compositions I considered but didn't choose:

Too complex, would likely end up messy.

2-point perspective, forcing a third point would distort the image too much.

Too flat, lacks depth.

The initial blocking out of the scene - some of the angles needed fixing especially at the top of the image. This took most of the three hour lesson - getting used to working with the grid was challenging but pair off as everything was well proportioned with less active measuring.

After fixing the perspective of the ceiling and adding details.

Feedback from this version - too grey! My struggles with contrast continue. The walkway also looks tilted due to the lines bring too dramatic - I will fix this and add more contrast to the sketch.

The finished piece

I think that adding more contrast by darkening some of the shadows was really beneficial overall. The main thing I would change about this piece is the wasy I shaded it. I developed the tone before I learned crosshatching so I was mainly colouring it in with no attention to how the shading informed the shape or the angles of the planes themselves. If I did it again I would definitely choose the direction of my pencil marks more carefully.

However the shading wasn't the main exercise of this piece; it was the construction of perspective. This was definitely the most difficult piece to construct purely for the combination of it being in 3-point perspective and focusing on complex indoor architecture. Placing the walkways and making them feel as though they fit within the perspective was the most challenging part as I kept assuming which way I felt the lines should be angled rather than observing how they actually looked - because I would looking up at them I felt like they should angle downwards but because they don't lie parallel to the viewer they actually tilted at a slightly odd angle which took a few attempts to get right.

I think the rest of the perspective works well, and using a grid was really beneficial for getting my angles and proportions correct.

If I did this piece again I would try to further emphasize the loss of contrast and detail the further from the viewer you move because I think the far walkway is still a bit dark which disrupts the perspective slightly.

Week 3 - 3 point perspective

This week we ventured out onto campus to draw some buildings in three point perspective. This meant having a third vanishing point either above or below the horizon line for the verticals to converge at. I wondered around campus until I found a comfy spot to sit between the three main buildings. My choices were the Vijay Patel building, Queen's building and the food hall with some interesting buildings in the distance. I obviously chose the most visually complex because it looked the coolest - I mean to challenge myself!

The vanishing points in this scene are obviously well out of frame but because I'm looking up at the buildings I know the verticals will converge above the horizon line (which I roughly equated to the horizontal line of bushes in the middle of the scene), so I measured the angles with my pencil and sketched out my rough estimate of the perspective in my thumbnail. It took me three attempts to get a thumbnail that I liked, but because I went into so much detail in the sketch I was confident I'd be able to execute the final piece successfully.

My thumbnail sketches in the field.

My final thumbnail was the one I chose to work from. It was a very wide framed image but that proportion allowed me to show the perspective the most.

After learning some basic construction techniques at the Drawing Centre I started breaking down the basic blocks and adding the details like panels and windows.

Using construction lines to build up the finer details in the correct perspective.

Starting to add shading and using line weight to emphasise depth. The most important thing for me to pay attention to with the shading is where the most contrast is. The foreground is where the focus should be so I will try to keep the background less saturated to achieve that.

This is my piece after working on it in chunks spread throughout the week.

At this point I was recieving feedback about my shading technique. In order to improve the shading I'm going to slightly darken the faces which are not facing the sun overall. This is to help communicate the form better especially on the right hand side where the geometry changes a lot and needs to be more clearly comunicated.

The finished piece.

This is my favourite piece of component 1. I think the texture of the bushes along the bottom of the image could be improved, and where some of the peripheral details lose contrast it becomes difficult to discern form, but overall I think it is quite effective. Another thing I would do is increase the amount of sky I shaded just to allow the image to be cropped more professionally with adequate breathing room above the subject.

The most important thing I learned from this piece is using tone to differentiate the different planes of an object. The walls facing the sun will always be lighter than the walls facing away and into the shade. Increasing the contrast between the two is the quickest and most effective way to add depth to the image and make the form clearer to understand.

Week 2

2-Point perspective was the focus of this week. The hardest part was figuring out where to place the horizon line without actually drawing it - it wouldn't fit on the page and forcing it to do so would distort the perspective too much. Initially I was really slow to sketch out the thumbnail and produce the first image (the one with the bridge). Maintaining the scale and getting the angles correct by measuring them against my pencil was weird to start with but after the first hour it started to feel more natural. I was much quicker to start and finish the second image so I could tell that my skills have definitely improved even in a short time.

I can definitely see issues in the first image, the cubes in the front look skewed. They are slightly turned compared to the rest of the shapes and I don't think I accounted for this properly - I used the same vanishing points as with the other objects, which makes them look wrong in the scene. I think that my second attempt is better overall but because I worked only from photos it has its own issues with distortion. I also think that the scaling was more difficult with this one because it was awkward to try and measure from a phone screen, but overall I think I improved. I also tried to pay more attention to the shading on the table surface by including the reflections of the objects which were all perfectly vertical despite the angle of the camera.

I tried to take the photo from a higher angle to make more of the top surface visible.

after placing the objects in rough perspective I added the contact shadows to give them weight in the scene.

I erased and fixed some of the edges to fit the perspective better, as well as shading simply.

I enhanced the shading and emphasised the perspective by adding some different line weights.

My first attempt, 3 hours - some shapes are slightly too exaggerated such as the bridge. It took 3 attempts to get a good thumbnail, which took about an hour total.

My second attempt, 90 min - the scaling of the right hand cube is too large, but overall it took much less time to complete and turned out similarly well to the first.

Week 1

My finished piece after 2 hours total.

This week was my first traditional art session. We were given an array of still life compositions to draw from, all of which presented a unique arrangement of organic and inorganic forms. I drew from a variety of them during each activity before choosing which one to focus on for the final piece of the session.

These were some warm up thumbnails, each one only 2 minutes each.
I learnt the principle of framing and that we always do it to train our brains to see within a boundary. I also learnt that seeing within a boundary takes practice and I might need to adjust my frames while thumbnailing to get it right.

The left handed drawing at the top was an interesting way to train our brains to take what we see and put it on paper. I might draw left handed more often.
The shaded piece was a 20 minute drawing using my dominant hand again. The feedback I got from this piece was not to cut out the shell just because it was challenging. I'm here to learn not to make things easier for myself.

For these two single line drawings I didn't look down at the page.
This was my favourite activity because it was the most challenging and showed the speed and reasonable accuracy with which I can capture a composition with as long as I don't overthink it.

This was of my piece at the end of the lesson after 70 min.
I learnt the importance of measuring to get the relative proportions right - initially the jug was way too tall but after measuring it, it turned out to be only one 'teapot' high.
I decided to put at least an equal amount of time in at home to try and finish it off based of the photos of the composition I had taken.

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