Introducion:
For my Wednesday class, Observation, Draw and Composition, We were required to collect three natural/organic items and then draw them. We had to draw the light and the shadow reflection on and off the items. I was excited for this mini project, I enjoy drawing out object and trying to draw them accurately with the light and shadow. Even though I am not the greatest at it, I have a good time trying. I decided to use two vegetables and one fruit.
Materials:
The materials that I used for this project is pastel paper, a variety of coloured pencils and a sharpener to sharpen the pencils (which is not shown) and a red pepper, plum and mini pumpkin which was used as a reference for my drawing.
Creative Process:
For this mini project I decided to use two food. I went to the local loblaws which is across the street, with the idea of using fruits and vegetables in mind. I spent some time looking around and deciding what would be best. I then settled upon a red pepper, because the red colour of the pepper and the green stem were nice and vibrant, then I chose a plum since it had a different size and shape compared to the pepper, and lastly I chose a pumpkin due to its unique shape and because it was a nice vibrant orange compared to the red and purples. Once I had my items, I placed them down in a formation that I really liked, but also in a way that looked natural.
Workflow:
To start off this mini project, I set up my organic/natural items in a way that looked somewhat natural and in a way that would show enough shadow and lighting. Once I was satisfied with the way my items were set up, I lightly drew an outline of the items in white so that I would have an idea of the structure for my drawing. Then I pulled out and chose the colours that I first wanted to use. Since I decided that I would colour in the plum first, I inspected the plum and chose colours that would accordingly match and be suitable to the plum. First I did a light layer of colour. I used, a dark red and purple for the main colour of the plum then I used yellow and orange since the plum had some other markings on it. When I had the first layer of colour down I then added my light. After the light was added with a white pencil crayon I added another layer of colour. I repeated the colour and light layers until I was happy with what I had done. I did not press hard right away, I had to progressively build up to it. The reason why I had to build up the colour is because the paper has a lot of tooth to it, and if I were to press hard the pigment would fill up the tooth and make it flat making it harder and almost impossible to add more layers.Once I finished the plum, I worked on the pepper, which I did the same steps as the plum, except I used different colours, such as lighter reds, green and orange. After the pepper I worked on the mini pumpkin, and once again I did the same presses of colouring as on the mini pumpkin as I did with the plum and pepper, but using different colours, such as many shades of orange, yellow and brown. Once I have finished drawing all three objects with the light reflection, I then added the shading. For the shadow I did not just use a simple brown or black colour, If you look closely the colour of the item reflects in the shadow, so I blended the reflecting colour with in the shadow, and a mix of brown and dark gray.
Final Work!
Conclusion:
I really enjoyed this project the whole time I was doing it. ALthough I did enjoy this project, I did have some struggle while trying to complete it. The struggle that I had was that, I pushed the assignment aside. I had many other assignments to complete, that I did not have time to enjoy working on colouring in my organic objects. I pushed it aside for a month, and when I had the free time to work on it I jumped to it right away. In the end, I am very proud of my art work. I usually do not like sharing my art work, and showing others, but I had the strong urge to show everyone this drawing and to my surprise I have received a lot of positive feedback.
