Traditional Drawing - Week 3 Year 2

 Week 3 - Materials and Surface Properties

For this week, the emphasis was on making the materials readable.

Visual Reference:

There were a couple of still life's, however again I could only see one and I was already fascinated with the metal tin and the forms in the glass jug so I was perfectly happy to go ahead and begin this still life.

Reference photo of still life- Desaturated

Thumbnail Sketch:

I worked on this thumbnail for a while and I was lucky enough that the composition I had in front of me was already a decent composition. The only adjustment I made from critique was to shorten the drapery on the right so that the centre of the image then becomes the glass jug and the metal container.

Thumbnail Sketch

Final Piece:

Regrettably, I did not take images while I was doing this piece because I was so involved in the process that I completely forgot. The process was very similar to the previous weeks of translating grid onto the page and then blocking and refining values. The critique I received were:

1. I should squint when looking at the values of the glass, so as to just add the larger, more impactful values and shapes and to control how noisy the final values are. Before that point I was meticulously adding in every small line and this lead to a series of confusing values that made the object less readable. A key point of material properties is the contrast of the material, so by focussing on larger areas it really helped make the jug more readable as glass.
2. The metal container needed attention on the bottom bevelled edge - I had the shape wrong in perspective and value which made the bottom of the container look warped (especially with the shadow on the box)
3. The contained needed a small fix in symmetry, where I used the folded page vertical technique from a previous week to make sure the vertical was in face vertical.

Final Piece

Conclusion:

I am much happier with this piece in comparison to the piece last week - I love how strong I managed to get the contrast in the jug and the metal container and believe that I managed to get a convincing final piece. Some sacrifices were made in the other objects, however I think that it is ok in terms of they are not the focal point and so it does not detract from the initial impact of the overall piece.