Week 7 Study - Still Life and transparent surfaces

This week for observational drawing we looked at still life for one part of the lesson and transparent surfaces for another. Still life, especially when it comes to plants, have a lot of complicated shapes and little details so I had to really study what I was drawing and recognise the features of the object. With transparent surfaces, it is tricky to get the reflected and refracted light to look correct in the subject of the drawing, so like the plants I had to really look at the glass and pick out the actual detail. 
 

Out of these studies, I think I managed to capture the reflective properties of the glass pebbles and glass bottle particularly well. You can see that the glass bottle is supposed to be transparent through the shadows and strong contrasting highlights used to represent the light being refracted through the glass. I think my ellipses need work though, as some of them are slightly off in shape and are sometimes not equal on both sides, like on the metal jug.

 

Here is another glass that I did in pencil. Pencil is good for glass surfaces as it is easier to do fine details such as the reflections in the glass. 

Week 6 Study - Interiors

For week 6's Observational Drawing class we went on an excursion to Bradford Cathedral. I ended up drawing this image which took quite a long time, about an hour. I am disappointed with the composition of this picture, and I felt that I did not spend enough time looking for a good composition before starting the image. This is because I did not properly plan out the composition properly, how the image would look on the page or getting down what I wanted to include in the picture, which is important for a scene with a lot of detailed things in it. The picture does not follow the rule of thirds quite well, which means that the eye won't stay on the page very long and certain areas of the image have little to no intresting qualities to them. Quickly sketching some small thumbnails would have improved my confidence and overall produced a better finished piece.

 

I think the shading turned out well in this picture but I am not too pleased with much else. The perspective of the piano is particularly out and the left pillar I accidentally drew far too skinny and it gives the impression that the pillar is not sturdy. I should in future take more time to look at what I am drawing and to put more effort in to my images.

Week 5 Study - Seas and Skies

There was no observational drawing class this week as it is study week, so I took the opportunity to go back to my home town and tried to practice drawing seas and skies as directed. I have one image here that I did late on in the day when the sun began to set, done in 30 minutes using pastel chalks. I found it difficult as the clouds were continously moving and of course the sun was setting so I had to get infomation down very quickly.

I feel that I may have got the colours slightly off, and this could be improved if I had gotten the information down faster. The colours used ended up being an interpretation of the mood that I wanted the image to portray, rather than a literal portrayal. the brighter colours I used give the image a cold yet light-hearted feel of a sunny autumn/winter afternoon, with the blues and purples making the image give the impression of coldness and the pale yellow highlights giving the image light and making it appear that the sun is still in the sky.   

Week 4 Study - Drawing scenes with lots of information

For week four, we actually went on the roof of the Chesham building to learn how to draw scenes in the distance with lots of information to put down. I learnt that it was much better to put down an impression of the scene I was drawing to fool the eye rather than actually try to add all the detail as there was simply to much for me to finish the drawing at an efficient pace. The speed of which I work is one of the main areas I feel I need to improve, and I feel that I am slightly improving in this area. The images below in the first scan I completed in half an hour each. I still think I need to speed up a lot more when drawing but I am pleased with the progress I have made. With all the images I used charcoal and then white pastel to pick out some highlights and I feel this has improved the overall quality of the pictures as they give a good impression of the form of the objects.  

 

The second image I spent around 45 minutes on this piece and I am pleased with how it turned out, especially the composition (except the distracting fence at the front of the image) and the perspective. All the lines in the picture that should converge to the vanishing point do so, although the window on the nearest building is slightly off. The perspective is correct except for the gate at the front. To give the impression of a brick texture I put down a couple of sections of brick rather than filling the whole building. I should maybe have picked a slightly more detailed scene so that I would be able to apply the techniques a bit more when representing complicated information in an image.

Week 3 Study - High/low contrast in images

We were asked this week to use two different mediums to produce two images of the same scene, one with high contrast and one with low contrast. I did two scenes but this one turned out slightly better in my opinion, even if the scene itself was quite simple. For low contrast I used charcoal and for the high contrast I used markers, but I ended up with mixed results on how much contast was present in both images. :S