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.