Still Life
In today's afternoon session we did another drawing task, however this one was sightly different to the others. Instead of venturing out we stayed in the studio, and when I walked in I saw three tables with different objects in the center. I sat around one of the tables and John gave us the brief - to draw the objects on the table. We had to think of how the objects worked together, size/proportions and what materials we could use to create the drawings.
On table one were a variation of large cardboard letters and other sculptures. I was sat right in front of a 3D letter 'R' that was wrapped in newspaper. I drew this objects just using a H and B pencil, using the B to sharpen edges and for shading. For the newspaper effect I replaced the small writing with squiggles but there were too large bold letters on the paper so I drew them how I saw them. I like the shading on this sketch and also think I managed to show the correct proportions of the letter well.
On the same table my eyes were drawn towards a two large objects. One looked like an 'S' but made out of wheel like objects and next to it was a cardboard 's' cut to look blocky. I drew these items using pencil like the previous drawing. Shading helped emphasize the 3D of the drawing which is what I aimed to do.
We then moved onto the second table where there were stacks of cardboard boxes and other materials such as scrunched up paper and plastic. For this drawing I used a pencil at first to sketch the outline of the boxes and then used a fine liner to do the rest. I chose to do a sketchy rough looking style for this drawing because the boxes were messy and cluttered, rather like this drawing style so I thought it would suit the sketch. I used dark squiggles on the paper (on the right) to make it look scrunched up. The plastic on top of the boxes was kind of like bubble wrap, but instead of small bubbles it was large square pouches of air. The plastic creased in certain ways meaning there was a lot of shadow and texture so I did rough markings to create this effect.
On table three there was one stack of five boxes. John came round and suggested using a grid to aid us when drawing the box proportions, however I did not find the need for this as I was confident that I could get the correct proportions. I am glad I did not use it as I feel I achieved the correct proportions of the boxes. Once I had completed the sketch I decided to use grey tone markers to show the shadows of the boxes. I have used these markers once before and liked how easily they blended so I enjoyed using the markers for the boxes as I feel that it gave an effective colour and shadow effect on the boxes.
On the boxes was the the 'IKEA' logo so I decided to do a quick sketch of said logo. Once I had sketched this I reached for a blue marker pen to colour the blue areas, however the pen did not work correctly but I am glad it didn't work because it led me to try using oil pastels as a replacement colour. I have never really used oil pastels before so it was fun to try them out. The pastels were quite difficult to handle and to get a precise line so it came out quite messy, especially when I had drawn the logo quite small. I then used the yellow for the outside of the logo which proved tricky as some of the blue merged with the yellow to create green smudges on the yellow between the letters, The pastels were a challenge to use but it felt good to use a new medium and considering the problems faced I think the sketch looks okay.
