Week 16 - Composition and Compositional Principles (Part 1) Still Life. Thumbnail sketching
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This
week, I was tasked with studying composition through creating thumbnails and a
final piece.
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By
creating smaller thumbnails, I could analyse the general shapes and value
blocks of the composition to make a successful result.
Thumbnails:
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I set up a
still life on my window ledge using a collection of various bottles and boxes,
with a rug to frame the objects. I quickly blocked-in shapes and for the
darkest objects I also shaded them in to get a vague idea of how the values on
the page would translate.
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By making
these thumbnails I could quickly and effectively mark out how the elements
interacted together. I could avoid errors like elements kissing and the lines
intersecting at non focal points. I could also see how the shape contrast would
affect the lines of the image.
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I chose
the one on the top right because it had a defined curve shape in the tops of
the bottles that intersected with the horizontal dark line of my window frame.
The two objects that best intersected the focal point at the centre were both
on a box, which added some height variation. The two darker bottles on the left
helped create a vertical line on the left third.
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Thumbnail Sketches |
Final Piece:
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I began
with a simple blockout from life, and then defined the darkest areas first.
These were the left bottles, and the creases in the fabric at the back. I then
used the blending shading technique to render the bottles to aim for a glossy
texture, and mostly hatched in the shading for the fabric and the box.
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I wanted
to avoid this piece becoming very glossy and having the paper texture be
obvious on the result, so I tried a technique where I used a water brush pen to
wet the graphite and distribute it in an area evenly. This worked well, since
then the areas I blended would pick up darker pigment on a second pass letting
me create almost black with a 4B pencil. It also helped make the texture of the
glass, since it was not perfectly smooth in places and had a watery effect to
it. The result looked like a water colour to some degree, which I thought was quite
aesthetically pleasing.
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The only
issue I ran into was that the paper in areas that had a lot of water started to
buckle since my paper was not of a high density or weight. This can be seen in
some of the subtle lines on the background of the piece and was helped a little
through pressing the paper under my book overnight.
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I was
quite scruffy with the shading this week, focussing most of my effort into the
areas of darkest value to create contrast that I had been lacking. If I had
more time to dedicate to this piece, I would have taken more care to shade the
midtones darker so that the highlights could shine through better.
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Final Piece |
Final Conclusions:
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Overall,
I am happy with this week’s task and I think it shows that my approach to still
life is slowly becoming more gestural and less stiff, since last term that was
something I felt I struggled with early on.
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If I were
to do this again, I would certainly spend more time refining the midtones as I previously
said, and I would have put an object in the composition that had a midtone value
like with my buddha plant pot in week 15.
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