Eyes, Nose, and Mouth Exercise

Purpose: 
• To demonstrate understanding of the structure for each feature: eyes, nose, & mouth;
• To practice using black & white charcoal to render a drawing, using brown paper as the middle value

The primary which works well in my drawings is the shading. It’s clear to see where there is darkness and where there is light for the most part, although at times there is less definition in some areas and more in others. One thing that needs more work is how I capture my own likeness. For instance, one can tell the eye I have drawn is an eye, and that the nose I drew is a nose, but for the most part they don’t look like my own nose. This is an important thing to accomplish when doing a self portrait, otherwise it will look just like a portrait. 

Still Life Drawing

Purpose:

• To create a still-life drawing that demonstrates understanding of drawing in perspective, along with using a variety of mark-making techniques to describe form;
• To understand value by creating a good range of values between black & white to help make the objects appear 3D;
• To demonstrate quality craftsmanship and good composition skills in a drawing.

         Before value, one challenge I faced was with the proportion of the pieces. This is something with which I always have trouble--when I draw people, my favorite subject, the legs are always too short or too long. Overcoming this took many attempts.

The biggest challenge I faced was how to represent the value of what I was seeing accurately in a 

two-dimensional way. The arrangement of my area facilitated not one, but two light sources, and to depict this was my first challenge within value: picking which values or which light source to ‘listen’ to. If I were to ‘listen’ to both light sources equally, my piece would have been a convoluted smattering of dark alongside light, so picking was important. 

After deciding which lights and darks to push, my next challenge was how to represent them. I had never worked on a piece so concerned with value, and as such my hand was at a lower skill level than my eye. When I began, I did so with a trepidation that each mark by itself would be important, yet as I continued to work the piece, it slowly came to be that it was the culmination of marks which stood out. By using a kind of swirling technique the gradients came easier, I found, and employing this allowed for a less stressful mark-making experience.

         In the end, I am most proud of the way my objects are defined from one another without the use of line. The ability to do that using value seemed like such a far-off, high-skill technique, but I feel as though I conquered at least the basics of it and came away with a better understanding of not only how other artists work, but with a comprehension of where my hand is really at skill-wise.