Part 1 Assignment 1 Natural Forms

Natural Forms

The initial arrangement looked crowded and quickly turned into a tonal sketch; otherwise I didn’t think it would have been possible to make any sense of it. When I started on the third sketch, I had changed round the arrangement three times. As I think there was too much empty space at the bottom I later reduced the size of the rectangle there. I liked the way the pepper was given more prominence in this third sketch and there appeared to be more directional flow than in the previous versions. 

   After starting the large third sketch in pencil, on an impulse I decided to try using charcoal. First I tried out a few ways of rendering the various surfaces in charcoal, which seemed to lend itself well to these objects, especially the textures of the broccoli and cauliflower. I like the expressiveness of this medium, yet I didn’t think it was too challenging to obtain an accurate depiction of most of the objects. While at the same time they weren’t overly realistic. It became a rather messy affair doing the colour sketch, for which I used soft pastels. The shape of the pepper in this one became a little elongated in relation to the actual pepper and I thought there were too many sliced vegetables, so I replace the sliced mushroom with a whole one to match up with the broccoli.

large sketch with more work

large sketch 1- willow charcoal

In the final drawing: Generally I liked the way the rendering emerged. I was attracted at an earlier stage to the way the vegetables overlapped, seeming to form a kind of zigzag pattern from top to bottom and vise versa. However the arrangement didn’t work out as well as I’d hoped. I decided to move the broccoli further back and upwards, away from the pepper, to create more space in between, but now it looks as though doing this and by moving the cauliflower further over to the right resulted in the cauliflower appearing too insignificant. Applying more shading to the left hand side of the composition makes it appear too heavy in comparison to the lighter area on the right, having the effect of knocking the drawing off balance. It may have helped to simplify the flowers on the cauliflower and to have given them a little more definition, similar to the third small sketch. The area around the base of the broccoli where it meets the top of the pepper doesn’t look quite right to me. I think there is too much going on around the mid section causing it to look confusing. Despite this, I tried to arrange things so that a series of lines in some shadows and objects would lead the eye around the drawing, but I'm not certain if this has been successful.
Changes:

  I set up most of the arrangement again a few months later to have a go at some tweaking. I thought all three drawings looked a bit disjointed. Again this was confirmed by my tutor’s comments. I noticed this time the mid-tone shadows in the set-up and adding these to the negative spaces in all three drawings, with some smudging and erasing, helps tie the objects together more successfully than previously. I included the effect of reflected light on the shadows, which really added to their variety. Applying more mid-tones and blending there, prevents them from otherwise looking over fussy. More tonal shading (particularly mid-tones) and extra marks were also applied to the objects. I concentrated on the soft pastel so called sketch, last of all. I had built up a mental aversion to soft pastels for some reason, but through this experience I now feel a bit more relaxed with them. I shut out thoughts of possible outcomes and pushed myself into focusing on enjoying the process instead, despite it being part of an assignment piece. An advantage was that I returned to a previously fixed drawing and now I realize that fixing underlying layers prevents white from mixing with them. This was something that didn’t occur to me previously, but should have done - duh! I had completely underestimated its effectiveness. But something to guard against is fixing then trying to erase as that didn’t work for me.

Same drawing after more work

It only seems to make sense now to make comparisons between the altered drawings, as  the initial versions no longer exist, except as photographs. What I will mention is the following:
I have tried to remedy their faults as mentioned above. There are obvious size and location differences between the same objects in each drawing, ie the cauliflower has reduced in size in the final charcoal  drawing (bottom right) and the pepper is shorter and fatter. The extent to which I reduced the size of the cauliflower in the last drawing seems to make it look a little out of balance with the broccoli. This possible fault was something I decided was too risky to try changing so was left alone. I think the additional rendering within and around it have helped to redress the balance though.

Colour drawing 1 - soft pastel

I'm happier that there is more of a difference between the outside and inside of the pepper in the final version in charcoal (below). It appears smooth and shiny in relation to the inside. To do this I used a combination of the side and end of the charcoal stick in a mostly horizontal direction.  The features of the inside of the pepper go in a vertical direction as opposed to the outside, which to me is an accidental but fortunate spin-off. I prefer the broccoli in the first charcoal sketch to the one in the final drawing as it looks more understated - it blends into the background more comfortably. Whereas the final version of broccoli is shaded heavily, causing it to compete too much with the pepper. This also probably adds to its over dominating effect on the cauliflower.(see paragraph above).In spite of this I think the background objects now recede more, thanks also to adding some shading in the negative spaces and blending of edges has softened their previous impact. What I am certain of is that there is an improvement in all three drawings now.

Final drawing 1- willow charcoal

Same drawing as on left, after more work