Assignment 2: Final piece

I had to use a wide range of colours in this drawing to achieve separation between the flowers, the stems and the grass. I decided to go for hatching and layering techniques for the majority of the piece, with on/off pressure techniques for the flower petals and tick-and-flick applications for the foreground of grass. 

Composition

I'm really pleased with my chosen composition. The flowers are central in the drawing, with the tree acting as an enclosure/backbone, and the directional light coming down to the flowers. 

I worked from a photograph, which gave a better impression of directional light. This directional light drawn on does look a little artificial/photographic rather than natural, but I think I've made up for it in choosing coloured pencils. 

I like the little detail of branches at the top as it draws you in to the negative space of sky and then down to the flowers. I made the angle of the drawing slightly off horizontal to add more interest, so the tree goes slightly inwards as it goes up and the fence isn't quite horizontal, as I didn't want a 'boxed-in' effect. 

Overall, I'm pleased with my composition. I maybe could have made the fence slightly more angled to give it a bit more perspective, though. 

Form/Depth

The hardest subject to create form for was the tree. Because the back of the tree was shadowed by the directional light it was hard to create its cylindrical shape (where I would normally create darker edges with the foremost part highlighted lighter). The tree could have definitely been better with better planning and more time spent on it. Instead, I rushed it a bit but adding simple layers of tone and simple bark lines. Though, I did try to use the dark/light effect on the bark lines. 

I like the form of the pot, but being man-made it was the easiest thing to create form on.  The leaves, as a group have a sense of depth to them as I've detailed the foremost leaves and left the background ones simple. I spent a lot of time on the leaves with detail, trying to create form on each individual one. This is perhaps what makes the tree look much worse in quality!

The petals were much harder to create form for as I couldn't use a good range of tones, so I had to use the on/off pressure techniques to use the white paper as highlights. I added lines of orange to work against the white to create depth and form. 

Perspective

The shades of the grass needed a lot of control. For the background I needed to use much fainter markings with lighter tones. I then gradually made harder markings with gradual darker tones and adding more and more detail. I think this worked quite well. I didn't want to add every blade of grass and every section of detail so I randomly placed raised areas of grass with neighbouring highlights of white. I didn't use any detail for the trees in the background, either.

I think the branches at the top are massively effective in drawing the eye down. If they weren't there, the viewer would be drawn to the open space at the top and off the picture! They subtly point downwards to the flowers and directional light as well. 

Colour

I think the grey-blue tone used for the trees works well against the white/yellow directional light, and it complements the orange tones on the petals. The grass and petals were very hard to separate. I should have toned down the background green shades a lot more to separate the flowers from it. The tree is probably too dark and needs to remain a background subject. Because the flowers are struggling for attention against the green grass, the tree stands out too much. In all, I really like the colours chosen. The yellow is a cheerful colour working well with the sunset. The greens are luscious-looking and not too artificial. The blue-grey tree colour works well against all the bolder colours. And the browns from the tree, pot and fence all roughly match in tones, so as to not include too many colours to be distracting against the yellow petals.

It is really the dark/light tones that need more work in this picture to make the flowers stand out more, and to create more perspective and depth. 

Assignment 2: Plan

For the assignment, I decided I wanted to use flowers in a pot/vase in a natural setting with something man-made to contrast.

I started off looking for different themes and compositions doing some quick sketches. The first sketch doesn't have enough going on, although the contrasting textures would be interesting. I can also imagine after my previous A2 studies, that a whole A2 drawing filled with tree bark would be quite a tedious task! It would also end up being quite boring to look at. I then decided to go for a landscape scene with the flowers as a 'prop', but still the main subject. This was quite a difficult task to find a way to draw to the eye to the flowers, however. 

The third box was too open spaced. Too much negative space made the flowers look isolated and not as cheerful as they should be!

I quite liked the next sketch with the tractor, but found there was a balance/conflict between the tractor and flowers fighting for the viewer's attention, especially when the perspective makes the flowers and tractor look a similar size. The flowers were not the main subject and so I tried out new compositions without the tractor. 

I finally found a really good composition, which had strong directional light coming towards the flowers. (Sixth box; second down and third across). I added overlap between the tree and flowers for contrast in texture, for depth/perspective, and to lose negative space to add interest. The man-made fence in the background is good as it's subtle and not too distracting. The flowers really are the main focus in this composition. I liked the layers of trees in the background, too. However, I thought there might have been a bit too much space to the left of the flowers. I cropped this sketch (see the bottom image below) to make the flowers bigger in the picture, to make the directional light more centred and to get rid of the unwanted negative space. 

From recent exercises, I had decided to go for coloured pencils as my medium. I wanted to achieve a lot of detail and texture in this drawing and to use a natural selection of colours. The oil pastels may have been too bright and false looking, as would the felt-tip pens, and soft pastels wouldn't have created enough detail for me either. 

Check & Log: Drawing animals

Research point: George Stubbs

Exercise: Grabbing the chance

Quick Gesture Sketches
I really enjoyed this exercise of drawing animals, especially drawing my two dogs, Misty and Poppy. It was interesting trying to capture their gestures and character in the drawings.

I started off watching them for an hour or two and drawing some quick sketches every time they changed pose. I'm quite pleased with my attempts as the poses come across as what I intended, even the drawings on the bottom right of Poppy scratching! I think it was a good exercise for me to do as I try and draw things sometimes in too much detail, so it was good to be quicker and looser with the pencil. 

It was interesting trying to draw something I already knew well, in terms of character. Poppy (Springer Spaniel) has a very alert and 'on-the-ball' character, which really shows in the bottom drawings on the second picture with her upright back and right-angled, stiff head. Contrasting with that, Misty (Labrador/Retriever) is laid back and 'soft', which is shown with her poses consisting of more curves and relaxed lines. 

These quick sketches have really helped me in knowing how to start drawing a pose!

Gesture drawings of 'Misty' and 'Poppy', Labrador/Retriever and Springer Spaniel 

More gesture sketches of Misty and Poppy

Adding more detail

I then went on to add more detail to some sketches, using thicker pencils to add some shading. I found the pencil worked really well in producing enough dark/light contrasts and for creating the fur textures, so I stuck with it!

I used my previous techniques of hatching and drawing directional lines to add contours to the form of the dogs as I did with my still life drawings. I also used softer outlines for a more natural look, which worked especially well when I wanted to add stronger lines for shadow or darker areas to contrast. 

I tried drawing a black bear (from a photograph) using graphite pencils to experiment with the darks and highlights. The hatching is a bit messy in this and unfinished, but I'm pleased with the contrasts of highlights to dark shadows. The bear looks much stiffer than the sketches of the dogs. This could be because I had drawn it from a photograph and not from real life like the dogs, or maybe because I knew the dogs better?!

I also attempted a tiger using coloured pencil, intrigued by the patterns and different tones. Again, it was quite hard to capture the gesture, but it was a worthwhile experiment with the coloured pencils with the textures and tones of the fur!

Detailed sketch of Misty

Detailed sketch of Poppy

Detailed sketch of Misty

Black Bear using graphite pencil

Tiger using coloured pencils

Final drawing of Misty and Poppy
Of course, I decided on a drawing of the dogs, Misty and Poppy. This drawing took me two to three hours to complete, and surprisingly most of the time was spent on drawing the labrador! I chose pencil as my medium with a range of thicknesses, and I'm pleased with this decision as I really wanted to focus on the texture and detailed expressions of the dogs.

I think the composition could be improved as they seem too far apart, so maybe if I added some more background like leaves that might have connected them a bit more. I think I was frightened of drawing the attention away from the dogs with the busy background of Autumn leaves, so I left it quite minimal. 

The textures on the dogs was achieved by hatching, on/off pressures/fading techniques for the hairs, and by careful shading. The dark against light may be a bit much, especially for the shadowed area on Misty. But I'm quite pleased with the tones on Poppy's body, which ended up being a lot easier than with Misty as her hairs are longer and fold and protrude perhaps in a more interesting fashion. 

I think I've captured Misty's laid-back, softness in character and Poppy's alert look by their poses and by their eyes. I enjoyed drawing Poppy more, although she seemed to be more of a challenge at first. Her darker hair around her face really allowed me to show off that lovely expression full of thought! Because Misty had the sun on her face and is a much lighter colour, it was then harder to add a lot of detail to her expression, but as it is much softer than Poppy's it worked out ok. The only issue is the shadow on Misty's back behind the directional light of the sun looks quite out of place against her light colour and highlights of light. Adding shadow seems to be one of my weaknesses and something to work on! 

On a whole, I like the relaxed pose of the dogs that has been achieved and I'm glad I chose pencil for the detail it gave on their faces and for the wispy hair textures. The anatomy of the dogs looks convincing enough, too. But the things for me to work on are: composition, shadow and drawing a better background.

Final drawing of Misty and Poppy using pencils

Research point: Renaissance masters

Check & Log: Drawing plants and flowers