Title: Stories Laying Still Size: 36" by 24 " Medium: Compressed and vine charcoal on white paper Completion: 2020 September
Reflection Looking back on the final product I created, I am happy with the product that I created. This was my first experience using charcoal as a medium for drawing. I enjoyed the ability to experiment and understand a new medium in a way that also let me better my skills at realism. My artwork can be seen as simplistic, but in itself it makes you think about the purpose of leaving the books blank in space. It allows the viewer to have a creative view point when looking at the piece. The most important skills I used to create my work included; shading, sketching, measuring using my hands as reference, and light theory. I had to make sure as I worked on the project it stayed consistent in size. I enjoyed being able to find my creativity and shading what I though made most sense and comparing it back to what I was seeing in front of me. It was an extremely helpful learning experience when it came to drawing realism as well as understanding how to transfer proportion from sight to paper. In the piece, a huge tool I mentioned was shading, in order to have the best level of shading I needed to include big amounts of contrast between the light and the dark. I made sure to make the black of the book as dark as possible and the white of the highlights the lightest I could make. This also helped me to create balance between having the darkness of the books as well as the light of the background. Continuing, this made me focus on the space I was taking up on the paper. I wanted the viewer to be directed entirely to the books and nothing in the background. This left me using space as a void that would guide the viewer to the books. The most difficult part of the drawing for me was getting the original sketch to a place that I was happy with. Drawing without a frame of reference, such as a grid, if more difficult for me than I had priory predicted. Even so, I enjoyed the challenge and the new skills I gained from completing the project. If I were to do the project over again I would work on my skills of objects that could be considered to be more advanced than books.
Process Picture One To begin, I started by using vine charcoal to sketch out the books, vase, and bowl so that I could have an understanding of how the charcoal worked and how much pressure I would need to draw with it. I had to keep in consideration the space of the piece and what balance I wanted to create. I wanted to have a very dark element (the books) and a very light element (the background). I allowed myself to just flow with the paper and filling in where the darkest parts of the piece where. I choose an angle to draw from so that my drawing would be consistent with my view of the still life. I made sure to focus more on using the charcoal than the actual accuracy of the drawing in the very beginning.
Picture Two As I continued, I start by laying out the shadows and the darkest parts of the books. As time went on though, I realized I was not happy with my composition. I did not like the use of space in my piece and how cluttered it felt to look at. I wanted to create a piece that was more open for interpretation. I wanted to include more books in my still life so that I could focus my piece about stories and bring to life the books in front of me. I knew that I wanted to include a centerpiece that was all books. This photo shows the final sketch of the original composition I had, I used it to play around with the charcoal so that I could have a better understanding of how to shade when it came to drawing the final piece. I was happy with my understanding of shading and using contrast in order to make the shapes seem more three dimensional.
Picture Three As my final practice piece, I configured a new still life arrangement and sketched out the three books. I started by shading the tops of the books as the darkest point of the paper and then working more on placement and making sure everything was proportional. I looked into where the books where highlighted and how the spines of the books were curved in some places and stick straight in others. This helped me to determine how to make the books look more three dimensional. I also used my space to make sure that the viewers eyes went straight to the books and not traveling around the outside of the paper. I took into consideration the angle at which I was looking at the books, and the angle which I was drawing on the paper. I was satisfied with my final composition and decided to start work on my final piece.
Picture Four Looking back on my planning sketches I was very happy with the outcome. I worked very hard on making sure I could resize the image from what I was seeing to the paper as well as understanding space balance. I used my prior knowledge of shading in order to help me understand where I should be pressing down harder with the charcoal. The hardest part about the planning stages was definitely figuring out what composition of objects I wanted to do. As I continued the final piece it was very helpful experimenting with both vine and compressed charcoal so I would know how to better use both on the final piece.
Reference Photos These are the photos that I used as reference for my drawings. I converted them to black and white so that they would be easier to transfer into a charcoal drawing.