Week 15 – Shading Techniques
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This
week, we were tasked with attempting 7 styles of shading for objects to create
form and substance.
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By
experimenting with these techniques, the hope is that I can learn where best to
apply these techniques to different material types to achieve the best outcome
in a short period.
Task 1 – Shading Techniques:
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I chose a
variety of objects and materials for this set of drawings, attempting to illustrate
the best features of all the techniques. I will touch briefly on each material,
as none of these drawings were aiming to be “finished” illustrations just me
getting used to the applications of all the techniques:
o Circling: this worked well for
shading a rounded, smooth object. I could very the pencil pressure as I did
each circle, and the tighter the circles typically the darker the values. It worked
great for getting a consistent tone across the object.
o Scribbling: I chose a skull after
reading that scribble can work well for a gestural style drawing, since I had
tried something similar in the early weeks of the course. This time I focussed all
my lines to areas of great contrast, like the eye sockets and the nose bridge,
not taking my pencil from the page to help create a contour style for the skull.
o Blending/smudging: this is my
usual go to for drawing, since it allows me to remove the texture I can get
from my paper and it is the method I grew up learning. For this reason, I think
I rushed this bottle, and I wasn’t that happy with the final result, but it let
me relax for a moment.
o Stippling: I hated
stippling, it was extremely tedious and time consuming for what I thought was a
mediocre result. I chose a fabric for this technique to aim to create the
texture, and I will admit that the stippling technique worked quite well for
the seams. I think in small quantities, I might be able to use this technique
again.
o Rendering: This technique took me
a moment to understand – but once I understood it was like working backwards,
it made a lot more sense to me. I think the result of this one is quite successful
and really did not take long for a dark local value object. I could see myself
using this again, especially on an object that has some shine but not specularity
like the plastic on a mouse.
o Hatching: I was quite happy with
this technique, especially when I was able to do it on an object with a regular
cylinder shape like the bottle. It worked well for adding layers of depth onto
an object, and by subtly curving the lines I could easily imply the round shape
of the bottle.
o Cross-Hatching: This was one that
I thought really suited the material I chose for it. The rough twine texture
needed something a bit more gestural to imply the chaos in each bit of string,
so the cross hatching worked well for that. I could also curve my hatching to
make the cylinder shape of the twine more apparent too. I would incorporate
cross hatching in future pieces.
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Collection of all the shading techniques, edited onto one page |
Task 2 – Final piece:
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I set up
my still life on my window ledge in my uni room, since the lighting in the space
is terrible and the only way to get a strong directional light was from the
sun. I chose a plain, neutral tone fabric to act as the backing to the composition
and arranged 3 glass bottles of varying sizes, colours, and shapes, as well as
a simple cuboid box since I thought it might be fun to have the contrast of shapes.
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I then
blocked the piece out how I normally do with a light sketch, and this time I
took a picture of the composition to turn to grey scale to assess the values.
It surprised me how dark the green bottle was in value in the piece, since I
had it pegged as a medium toned object, so that saved me some anguish later.
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I tried a
combination of techniques for shading – I tried the blending/smudging for the
clear bottle, rendering for the two other bottles, scribbling for the fabric
around the piece, and where the fabric overlapped in shadow with the bottle, I
thought it might be interesting having the texture of cross hatching there. I
also hatched the box, although it was such a simple shape it was not hard to
shade in any kind of technique.
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I thought
for the most part I had gotten the shapes of the bottles right – but because I
did the blockout for the drawing in the same sitting as shading I had not
checked thoroughly and the bottles looked wonky and asymmetrical, so in the
edit I will have to try and fix this somewhat.
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If I were
to do this again, I probably could have left the box out of this piece and
focussed in on the bottles, since I do not think the box adds much to the final
composition. I think it shows the perspective of the scene ok however, so maybe
it did have its purpose.
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Final before crit edits |
Task 2 – Final piece updated:
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To try
and darken the tones I had put in without layering something like chalk on top
which would have been both messy and quite destructive, I opted for a
unorthodox technique I had tried before; I used a brush pen that had its own
water reservoir to blend the graphite with water. It sounds insane – but I
found it all but mattified the result and since it was not something precious
like a portrait for precision, I thought the gestural nature of the water edges
might add to the piece. It also helped to soften areas on the darker bottles
that I had made harsh white paper and did not have the pencil control to shade
them consistently lightly.
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I also
added some shading at the back to ground the windowsill and made it a darker
colour than the fabric so that could be differentiated. I tried fixing some of
the asymmetry of the bottles also, and they look better than the original, but
still not perfect.
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If I were
to do this again, I would spend more time on the sketch and construction of the
bottles to make them sit in the scene nicer overall.
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Final after edits |
Final Conclusions:
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Overall,
I am pretty happy with the piece as a whole. I think I am continuing to get the
values closer to successful.
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If I were
to do this again, I would just spend more time on it – I think it looks quite
messy in places (I am just going to call that “gestural”) in comparison to my
previous piece. Maybe it is a sign that I am loosening up and speeding up since
this took a ¼ of the time as my last piece before Christmas, so hopefully it’s
a positive.
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