Week 1- Reinforcing Skills: Line and Line Weight

In our first week, our task was to draw a still life in the studio, using the principles that we studied last year regarding line and line weight, and build on top of them. 

This technique is something that I don't particularly use, and I remember the struggle from last year... 

Essentially, what we have to do is induce the form, the depth, and the shadows and highlights using only lines, without any shading. I find that quite challenging since my drawings rely on shading entirely.

This was the first time drawing in the actual studio, and we only had 2 hours allocated, so my goal was to get the composition right with some thumbnail sketches, and then try to get the shapes of the objects right. Teodora has shown a new technique that really helped me scale up my thumbnail, and that was dividing the drawing into smaller parts. 

Getting the shape of the objects was not that difficult, but I really struggled drawing the flowers, since I have never drawn anything like that before. They ended up looking very stiff and unnatural. Fowers are supposed to look organic, alive.

With the feedback that I had received in class, I have decided to restart the whole drawing from scratch, paying more attention to detail, and focusing on representing the objects as accurately as possible.

I started with redrawing the thumbnail, but this time on the left, cause last time it ended up getting in the way of the flowers, and I didn't want to erase it, since it is very important to have the small version at all times. This way, I won't loose sight of the bigger picture while I would be drawing the final piece.  

When I started working on the final piece, I have decided to draw all of the other objects first, and then move to the flowers, since I knew I would be struggling to make them. When I got to them, I followed the approach of drawing the ones from further back, and then make my way to the ones that were closer. 

While drawing the flowers, I have used more rounded shapes, in order to induce a more natural feeling to them. 

I also made sure to have more line weight on the objects closer to me, constantly changing the pencils to thicker ones while making my way to the nearer objects. 

Shadows and highlights are very important in defining an object's shape, so I used more rounded shapes to induce the highlights, and parallel lines to induce where the shaws were. 

Final piece

I do like how the final piece turned out, particularly the composition and the fact that I conserved the organic feeling of the objects, but I think I should have made the objects in the back lighter to get more of that spatial depth.

 

For this drawing, I have used an F and HB pencil for the flowers and the back, a B and 2B for the flowers in the front and the vase, a 3B and 4B for the vegetables and plate, and a 6B for the onions.