Example still life
An initial still life set up recognizing the relative value of an object. This was a good example as it offers a wide range of values.
There are several ways of taking an initial gesture drawing to a completed composition. In this class we are beginning with thumbnail sketches which rough in the composition. There are gestures: general shapes and directions, but there isn’t much detail. In thumbnails drawings you should try to see the negative shapes around the objects, as well as the objects themselves. There is a good range of error in the drawing arising from this being your first real look at the subject. It might look something like this:
Time to move on to a fresh piece of paper to start the drawing.
- First, sit up straight. Get your drawing surface at a 90 degree angle.
- Find a spot to look at in your still life which is at eye level: you will always come back to this spot for reference. It will tell you if you have slumped, tilted your head, moved in any way.
Now that you have found out what the composition consists of in your thumbnail drawing, it’s time to try to get things in the right place. We are starting with triangulation (and this is a term that I’m playing fast and loose with here) to get the relative placement of the objects.
Just mark in lightly where you intuitively think the objects go, I have it marked in red, but they are just dots and a few small lines which indicate direction, looking something like this:
Next it’s time to refine that placement by finding what things line up on a horizontal or vertical axis. By holding your pencil up.
Find a vertical by holding your pencil at loosely at the tip and letting gravity make it vertical. Holding your pencil in front of you, you can gauge the approximate size of objects and see what objects are sitting truly vertical.
Holding a pencil horizontal is more difficult as gravity plays havoc with your pencil. You need to either stare at a blank wall to see when your pencil is level, or you have to find a surface directly in front of you, such as a table, which you know is level: then you can align your pencil with that. Then when you have it level, you can hold it in front of your still life and find out which points line up horizontally.
Draw these horizontal and vertical lines lightly, going over or re-stating your initial measurement of triangulation. You will have a series of light dots and lines, they are there to guide you so don’t erase them!
The next step is to find the oblique angles using the clock method. Stated simply: hold your pencil vertical and tip it until it lines up with the angle of the object.
Start drawing in the angle of the objects, in this case it is the tilt of the egg timer.
From this point, proceed to drawing in a more refined line description of the object, picking out more specific shape.
At this point I will stop here for today, but this will be continued!
[...] Composition: Seeing, Measuring, making decisions [...]