Still Life Drawing- A+

In order to draw a still life drawing, you must first place the objects in either one of these placements: Triangle, where the objects are placed to form a triangle, Cropping, where the objects are not entirely in the frame like this drawing, Framing, where there is one key objects and the rest surround that object (the edges of the paper can be part of the frame) and Rule of Thirds, where you draw 2 horizontal and vertical lines and make the objects' center match up with the lines.

I chose to use cropping (although it may also look like a triangle) because I wanted to draw using a compositional device that I've never used before. And since this was my first time drawing a still life, I wanted to focus on the shadows and making sure that the placement of the objects in real life and on the paper is as accurate as possible, and I felt that cropping will help my focus be geared into the details more than just trying to make the drawing look good overall.

For the steps in drawing a still life, we first need to frame our white paper (create a boarder) and use charcoal to grey out the inside of the frame. this creates the consistent background to work with that we can later on erase or add on to create depth. Then we render the outline of the object, taking the apple as an example, I would approximate the size and draw several light circles to get the overall shape. Then going over the light circles to create a more accurate shape of the object and darkening the outlines. After the outline is done, the next step is to get the overall contour of the object, making sure to colour in the shape of the object. So if I'm trying to contour the apple, I wouldn't just colour in straight lines, but curved lines. To create depth to the drawing, we will use our charcoal and white pastel to darken and highlight where the light hits the object. Usually, for every darkened area, there is a highlight right next to the area. Once that is done, colour in the shadows using charcoal to darken the shadows and making sure that the shadow right underneath the object is the darkest and lightening up as the shadow extends.

Despite this being my first time drawing a still life, I think I did a really good job capturing the details in the objects and successfully make them look realistic. I worked hard in making sure the contours are drawn in relation to the actual curves of the objects. I am most proud of my glasses, since that was the object with the most intricate shape and the shadows are not the typical shadows I thought I would see. I think the hardest part for me was the contouring because that was going to be the base of all the contrast I was going to work on and the relationship between each object (in line, a little behind, parallel) was difficult for me.

Artwork: The student used three complex objects with a strong placement that follows two compositional devices, a full range of tonal values, and shading along the contour.

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