Aim: To create a still life made with objects that have some significance to myself on a personal level and to create the drawing using a range of mediums and techniques that I have learned from this part of the course. (CLICK ON ANY IMAGE TO ENLARGE IT OR RIGHT-MOUSE CLICK AND OPEN IMAGE IN A NEW TAB)
I have selected four specific objects that all have some significance to myself one way or another. The mug, Nintendo 64 control pad and the microphone all have some significance towards my creativity and demonstrates the multitude of creative interests that I have. I enjoy being able to do many different things from voice work to animation. I also enjoy making computer games although I have yet to get around to actually finishing one! The small elephant in the front is special because it is a present I got for my girlfriend and I know how much she likes it. Needless to say she is special to me and so I wanted to include it in my still life. I think if I were to show any of my friends this picture they could probably understand quite well the significance of these objects and why I chose them.
The Drawing
This drawing has been done on an A3 piece of fine grain cartridge paper using a variety of H and B Grade pencils and graphite sticks along with some soft charcoal. During some of the exercises on this course so far I have found that I sometimes start far too dark with the grades I use so for this drawing I began using a F pencil to draw the outlines and then progress onto a H pencil for the lighter tones and build my way up to at least 3B for the darker tones. Some shading like towards the bottom of the mug and the shadows beneath the objects I used a graphite stick usually 6B or 8B to get a much darker tone. I wanted to use at least one more medium to diversify the image so I saw the microphone foam cover as an opportunity to use a charcoal stick for two reason: 1) because the foam cover was jet black and I felt as though I could not get a dark enough tone with just graphite or pencil and 2) because I took special notice of the fact that even though it was so dark, there was clearly some sunlight reflected off the foam which I wanted to capture with the charcoal.
At first I was apprehensive about drawing the game controller which you can see on the left as it is such an unusual and complex shape, so much so that at one point I was going to replace it with a simpler one like the one below which as you can see, is nowhere near as complicated a shape:
This is a special item for me because it was in fact my first games console, yet the N64 controller means just that bit more to me and I think one of the reasons is because of how obscure and unique it looks. This was more than enough reason for me to continue using this particular object and I think the way it has turned out has given me the confidence to not be deterred by the complexity of an object as a reason to not draw something. Once I had drawn the control pad I felt more comfortable with doing the rest of the drawing.
I tried to capture the edges where light would reflect between two planes of shadow. For example the control pad below where the flat top meets the underside of the control pad. There is not a sharp edge and appears to have it’s own flat side as opposed to being rounded. I think that I achieved this well as you can see below.
Also on the top of the mug where the sunlight was coming from above, I aimed to get the smoothed over of the lip of the mug to capture the light and then use the outlining shadow to distinguish that further.
I am not entirely convinced by the shape of the mug and whether I have got that right, especially as the handle looks a little off. I think the lighting and reflections could have been done a lot better which is not to say that I didn’t spend enough time on this object, in fact I probably spent more time trying to correct it than I did any other object, but it could have been the way I started doing the reflections and shading that led to these results. Perhaps next time I will try further to break apart the reflections on the mug to make them more convincing.
The elephant was a little more difficult to capture shadows as most of the surface was smoothed over almost all the way round but paying attention to the objects behind and how they project their shadows onto it gave me a better idea of where I should focus the lighting. Drawing this object did help me realise the importance of lighting and leaving certain areas white to illuminate edges and so forth, for example the ridge atop the elephant’s head is there to signify where it peaks.
The microphone was, generally speaking, quite an easy object to draw but it still came with some difficulties. I was concerned with the bottom part closest to the viewer as there were a lot of hidden details such as the ridges along the outside rim and certain places where there was a lot of dark shadow against black plastic and vice versa. I think I managed to achieve the sense of the dark plastic while still retaining the elements of light and dark on the object. The top of the microphone with the foam, as mentioned earlier, was done using a soft charcoal stick. After the marks and lines exercise earlier on in this segment, I wanted to use this as another opportunity to see if I could actually do crosshatched shading properly. Now I know it is not a particularly challenging area to do so but I feel I have managed to capture not only the darkness of the foam by using charcoal but also the light that still falls on it from above.
One problem I came to realise a bit too late on was that I was not sharpening my tools nearly enough. I kept using them until they became flat which was good to get a decent spread over the paper of a particular even shade but I think I ended up sacrificing a lot of detail because of it. I did very much enjoy the choice of surface, it really had a good tooth for everything I used and will definitely want to do more sketching on this particular type of paper in the future.
Overall I think this assignment has been successful. I can see the areas where I am strongest and also where I need to improve. I will use this post as a reference for my future work so I can come back and learn from this piece.
Alex Wallace: Drawing 