Still Life Drawing - B+

During the 'Still Life Drawing' phase of our learning in Art Foundations, we went through multiple variations of drawing still life objects. In the end of our unit, we completed drawing three still life objects and my end product can be seen above.

The first step of the process leading to this product was picking three objects. After picking my three objects, I positioned them around the table until I had a clear line of sight of what I wanted to draw. I decided to use the cropping and line of thirds methods in order to create my piece in order to make my subjects more prominent and stand out. The cropping method is where you position your object so that it is cut out from the picture, giving the artwork a form of perspective. The line of thirds method is where you have a three by three square grid and  you align your objects/subjects along the lie and points created by this grid. This method is great at giving your subject the most prominent look. After positioning, I set the tonal ground of the drawing by  shading the paper with vine charcoal. I then rendered my objects, creating the general shapes and form of my subjects. After that I contoured my object, I did this using a pencil (2B and HB) and vine charcoal and outlined the shapes of my subjects and their shadows. My light and dark values were then added, placed accordingly to what I saw in the objects. For this value placing process, I used my pencil, vine charcoal, blending stick and white chalk to add areas of pure black, pure white or in between. You can see in my drawing how I placed pure white values for the reflections in the light bulb and how I used pure black values for the lid of my water bottle. Finally, I finished off my piece with surface contour shading in order to blend values and make outlines more visible.

All in all, I am proud of my final work and experiencing the journey of making it. There were challenges and successes that I encountered along this journey. One of these challenges was drawing my banana and having it look 3D. One of my successes was placing correct white values along the rim of my water bottle in order to make it 'pop' and look realistic. Placing values is my weakness but I feel that this product proved how much I improved on doing that. I enjoyed creating this artwork and proud of what I have accomplished.

Artwork: The student had chosen more complex objects to draw and experimented with two different compositional devices (rule-of-thirds and cropping) with some success. The banana and water bottle were following the rule-of-thirds and the water bottle follows the cropping compositional device. The student also experimented with foreshortening with the banana with some amount of success. The front of the banana should be larger in size as it is closer to the viewer and some further refinement in following the contour shading with the water bottle and banana would move this drawing into exceeding expectations.

Blog post: All steps to creating the drawing is included with the successes and challenges to the project. The student misuses the term 'rule-of-thirds' as 'line of thirds' and would need to revise this.