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.