Look at that View

Inspiration Pictures

 Compositional and final sketches

Final Piece in-progress (not finished yet!)

1. For my project I chose to draw the front of my car looking from the grills level. The picture does have an interesting point of view but I don't think it has as much perspective as I wanted because it's one larger object in one point.

2. Perspective is important because it's in everything we see every single day. If we want to draw what we see in perspective it's essential to understand where you are in comparison to that object so the lines go in the right direction.

3. Practicing with colored pencil helped me understand how to layer colors to get the effect I want. It also taught me which colors to use to get a good variation and that it's okay to use colors totally opposite of the color of your object. In my piece I made sure to use at least 2 different colored pencils for each different color area I shaded.

4. I think my coloring came out pretty good but I struggled with creating depth and variation in the black portions and blending my colors together. To color my piece I started with the main color of the car and then added dark and lights variations over top and then went back with the main color again.

5. There are three main parts to my car which are the windshield, hood and grill. Those three things separate the piece but I don't think they create very much depth since it's just one large object.

6. This project was actually very fun for me because my car is something I am very passionate about. Being able to observe it so closely and explore mixing different colors helped me improve on problems I've had with shading for previous projects. I struggled with coloring the hood the most because the only color I had to be a contrast on the black hood was silver and not grey so some spots look metallic when the light hits it.

7. I think I would've felt a little more adventurous when picking my topic for this piece if we had practiced drawing different objects in perspective a lot more. I also would've liked more practice with prismacolor colored pencils so I could experiment before doing a final.

Still Life Final

In-Progress

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 Final

1. I think my final Still Life project turned out to be a good quality piece of work. The objects are all well defined and most of the page is clean and well-blended. One thing that I could've improved on is the amount of smudges throughout the piece.

2. A few objects are more realistic than others but you can tell what I have drawn. I included as many shadows as I could for example there's a shadow behind the card and in multiple places behind the fabric. Also I definitely could've used a wider range of values and made the whole piece darker but my style of art tends to be lighter and softer.

3. You can tell that the light source is in the top left because the right of the page is darker and the fabric at the bottom is darker. 

4. The compositional sketches are very important because they gave us practice with getting shading and proportions correct. There were so many objects on the table that you had to really study all the their details in order to include all the shadows. By drawing the table over and over again I grasped the main elements of the objects in view.

5. The most successful parts of my drawing were the cards, the fabric and the shadows. The fact that my cards were so much lighter than the rest of the piece and had shadows made them stand out. Also my fabric has good movement because of the way I drew and layered the lines.

6. The proportions and perspective of my final piece turned out pretty accurate after practicing with the compositional and final sketches. I finally figured out where to place the large can in the front and how large to make it in order for the rest of my objects to fit in correct perspective on the page. 

7. My eye is drawn to the top/middle right of the page because of all the shaded objects and layers. If the wall decoration to left on top of the fabric was finished the piece would've been a lot more balanced but it still has a pleasing composition. 

8. Like mentioned in question 7 the eye is drawn to the top/middle right of the page. The large can in the front creates a center of interest because of its size and the amount of shadows that surround it.

9. This project took me a while but most projects do because of how particular I am. Shading takes me a while and I've always had problems with getting it just right especially on round objects. I could definitely improve on creating a darker range of values.

10. Like I mentioned before I really struggled with shading and creating value. To fix this I had to keep going over the areas I shaded and make them darker. Another thing I struggled with is keeping the piece clean because it constantly smudged and ruined the light parts of my piece. The only way to fix the smudging was to erase and redefine any shapes that got messed up.

11. Still Life has taught me I need to work on shading and perfecting shapes. It has also helped me better understand value and how to create it. I can now look at an object and more easily figure out where the light source hits and the shadows form.

Shading with Prismacolor Practice

In this exercise we practiced shading objects in color using Prismacolor colored pencils. The spheres were the easiest because there was only one spot that the light source hit and you didn't really have to figure out how the value changes as the shape changes. The pumpkin and pear were a little harder to shade because it's hard to tell how the value changes especially on the pumpkin. Also I think I could use a little more instruction on what colors to use for the shadows and how to layer those colors because I'm not happy with my shadows. Overall this exercise was very insightful on how to add color.

Still Life Sketches

Four Compositional Sketches

Final Compositional Sketch

 For this project Mrs. Rossi set up a table of objects stacked upon each other and the students were to go around and draw the table of objects from different angles. The first four were my sketches from different angles and the larger last sketch is the angle at which I chose to do my final piece and that is my final sketch.

Shading Shapes

For this exercise we were supposed to correctly shade a set of 3D shapes in front of us. I think my shapes look pretty three dimensional and there's a good range of values. I am happy with this as one of my practice pieces.

Fabric Drawing Practice

If you can't tell by the pictures I had a really hard time with grasping the concept of how to draw and shade fabric properly. I started out using way too much dark and barely any white. After Mrs. Rossi helped me see what I was doing different I realized where my mistakes mostly were and improved for final piece.