Week 17 – Virtual Tour – Natural History Museum
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This week,
I was able to virtually walk around the natural history museum to find a animal
skeleton to draw.
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I was
tasked with doing some basic preliminary sketches, and then from that creating
a final piece.
Task 1 – preliminary sketches:
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I did
some very quick sketches (1-2 mins each) of various different skeletons – 1 mammoth
skull, 1 front on stag skull, 1 side on skull, and 1 stegosaurus skeleton.
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I
favoured the stag skull in the lower right especially because it seemed the
most dynamic and did not have too much complexity like in the stegosaurus
skeleton. It also would fit better on my page and wouldn’t have some really
large elements that would make the detail very focussed in one place like the
mammoth skull. This left the two stag skulls, and I thought the three quarter
angle would be more interesting than a very symmetry based image like with the
front on skull. The reference I could find for this skull was also much clearer
than the front on skull since I could not get close to the skull in the tour,
so that was how I made my decision on the skull.
·
I really
could have spent more time on these sketches, however I think for the intentions
on gathering a brief idea of how the shapes fit on the page/space it did enough
for me.
·
I was also
happy that I did not go for the mammoth skull – since apparently this was a
skull that was done very often so going for the stag skull seemed to be for the
best.
|
Initial sketches (the pencil was so faint very little showed up on
picture, sorry) |
Task 2 – reference and initial rendering:
·
Once I
had my reference chosen, I began sketching out my stag skull. I sketched in
areas that had core shadow like the eye sockets and the hole for the nose, and
then roughly shaded everything after. The lighting on this reference is rather strange
– and you can see on my initial versions that there is not any clear
directional lighting and even in my final version before I got crit that you
can’t see where the light source is. I also was confused since the local value
of this skeleton is not a normal bone colour – it is brown, so overall the
shading was confusing before I got crit.
·
I thought
I got the shapes of the skull correct overall and did enjoy drawing this skull.
Skulls were something I had some experience drawing from my previous school experience
doing projects at GCSE and A level, so this week felt like a comfort subject.
·
If I were
to do this again, I would focus on choosing where I want the light to come from,
even if on the reference there is no clear direction of the lighting.
|
Reference |
|
Version during render |
|
Initial version of final piece |
Task 3 – final adjustments to the final piece:
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The crit
I got in session was that overall the shadows were way to strong throughout,
and it lead to this flattening of the piece. So with a putty eraser, I softened
the shadows on the front plane of the face, and in general softened the
transitions between shadows. I kept the back area of the piece darker around
the neck, to try and keep the piece having levels.
·
I think
this improved my piece dramatically – it makes the whole piece much more
dynamic and seem like a 3D object, which makes me much happier.
·
If I were
to do this again I might have tried to push this further, but I am happy with
this piece so I wouldn’t want to change much more.
|
Final version of stag skull |
Final Conclusions:
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I am much
happier with this piece and think my final piece is successful – my sketches
could have been improved, but I felt confident at the time to just start this
piece and it paid off.
·
If I were
to do this again, I would definitely squint more and try and refine my core
shadow recognition – it still is a bit fuzzy and I really struggle with
choosing where to have larger areas of shadow and highlight.
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