Thursday, January 26, 2017

Final Thoughts


The first highlight from this semester was finishing my still-life drawing. Vividly I remember starting the drawing thinking "this will never look how it's meant to." It was tough at first; I had to erase and redefine, erase and redraw, erase and erase and erase until finally I took a step back to look at what I had produced and was shocked to see that I had produced something I never thought possible. This project was a wakeup call for me, that I was able to do more that I had thought was ever possible for me.



Another highlight from this semester was the assignment in which we were asked to reproduce a portrait originally draw/painted by a master artist. Although this piece doesn't look exactly as the master's did, I spent hours laboring over which colors to use, over the values in the face, and over the shape of the subject's features. In the end, I am proud of what I accomplished. I had not done a project such as this with colored pencil, so I finally had an opportunity to break out my Prismacolors which had otherwise been collecting dust. I learned the importance of using multiple colors, which at fist may appear too extreme to use by themselves, mixed together to create just the right one for what you need. This project was very fun for me, and what I gained from it was invaluable.




The third highlight from this course for me was the eyes, nose, and mouth studies done with charcoal pencils. I particularly enjoyed this project because people-portraits-are my favorite thing to draw, and being able to dive into the anatomy, to some extent, of the features of a human face was invaluable for me. Besides being able to look more closely at human features, this exercise allowed for more experimentation and practice with using value to create form, volume, and depth. Pictured above is the work I produced for the nose study of which I am most proud. This study took me the most time to finish to my liking, and by the end of it I had been having quite a bit of fun adjusting the values and creating features akin to my own that I was somewhat disheartened that I had to be done lest I overwork the piece. Much like the other drawing I completed using charcoal, the still life, this project served as an immense boost to my artistic confidence, and for that reason is a notable highlight from this semester. 

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