8-ball

My goals and intentions of this piece was to use oil pastels to get a colorful picture.  Another one of my goals was to get the ball to look 3 dimensional.  I accomplished the 3D ball by casting shadows on the ball and then drawing them.  The thing that surprised me most about my drawing was how great the background turned out.  I think the different blues and purples mixed together make a really pretty tie-dye looking background.  My drawing is about shadows.  The main focus of my drawing is the dark shadow in the middle of the page.  I think that the shadow of the ball leads you to look at the ball.

The most difficult challenge I had to face was was getting the right color when I was blending.  Sometimes when I blended, I couldn't get the right color, but sometimes when I did get the right color on the test page, I couldn't get it on the picture.  I met this challenge by playing around with the different colors to get the right color.  I experienced the shift to the right side of the brain when I couldn't hear the people talking around me.  All of the noise around me stopped.

My drawing really works at the shadow.  I think the shadow does a good job of leading your eye underneath the ball and onto it.  Something that I learned that I can bring into my next drawing is that not everything has to be detailed.  I learned that I didn't have to draw the spikes of the comb because they would make the drawing too detailed.  I learned how to make a silver color from Laura.  I didn't need to use the color, however I learned how she made the silver color and how to make things reflect off of it.  If I had a do-over, I would choose a different composition.  I don't think that my composition in this drawing make sense.  I think that the best thing about this piece is the shadow of the ball.  I really like it because it makes the ball look really 3-D and it casts a shadow over the whole composition.

Ice Cream Still Life

Challenge #6

For the leftovers jpeg assignment, I chose to take pictures of things that were leftover from the summertime.

Jake in the Shadows

This is a drawing of a picture I took of my dog, Jake, when doing jpeg challenge #5.  I think my dog looks very mysterious in this picture because of the way he looks like he's crawling out of the dark.

Takeout Box Drawing

My goals and intentions of this drawing was to draw the takeout box and capture the shadows of it.  I accomplished this by using a wide scale of shades of the charcoal.  I used dark, light, and all the shades in between to create the drawing.  The thing that surprised me the most was how 3-D the box looks.  I think it really looks like the flaps of the box are behind the other flaps.  My drawing is about shadows.  Shadows are an important part of my drawing because they are what causes the depth of the drawing.

The most difficult challenges I had to face were getting the angles right for the sides and flaps of the box and getting the chopsticks to have straight sides.  I met the first challenge by using the method where you hold up the charcoal to the side you have to draw and bring it to your paper to get the right angle.  This was a challenge because I kept moving the charcoal by accident.  I met the second challenge by doing the best I could do to get the sides of the sticks straight.  I experienced the shift to the right side of the brain when I couldn’t hear the music I was playing.  I got so focused on drawing, that I couldn’t hear anything else.

I think my drawing really works on the side of the box where the metal wire is.  I think that this side actually looks like the box has different layers folded.  I think it really works where the wire is going into the side of the box because it looks very realistic.  Something that I learned that I can take into my next drawing is how to sight the picture and put it onto the paper.  At first, I tried to draw a vertical picture on a horizontal piece of paper.  I finally realized this was not going to work, so I cropped the picture to get my view right and drew the box by looking at it and getting a good idea of where I was going to put things.  I learned how to make the chopsticks have better shading from Laura.  I really like how she shaded her chopsticks.  If I had a do-over, I would draw how I had the picture originally taken.  I think that I would have liked it a lot better if the whole picture was in my drawing, rather than just most of it.  I think that the best thing about my work is how the one chopstick disappears behind the flap of the box.  I think that this creates a cool 3-D effect.

Pumpkin Drawing

My goals and intentions were to draw the pumpkin and to get the shadows just right.  I accomplished this by carving out the light parts and darkening in the darker spots.  The thing that surprised me the most about my experience was how the parts of the drawing look really realistic.  I was really surprised that I was able to do this. I think that my drawing is about dramatic shadows.  The first thing I notice when I look at my drawing is the contrast of the dark shadow to the pumpkin.

The most difficult challenge I had to face was not smearing the charcoal and making it dull.  This was a tough thing to avoid because I had to work on sections next to the section I had already done and my hand smeared the charcoal.  To meet this challenge, I had to go back and fix the parts that I messed up.  I experienced the shift to the right side of my brain when I was really focused on my drawing.  When I was focused, I couldn’t hear anyone talking and the only thing I saw was my drawing.

I think my drawing really works in the darkest shadow.  I think that there is a really cool contrast between the dark black and the white.  Something that I learned that I can bring into my next drawing is how to make the drawing more realistic.  I did this by adding light and darkness like I did with the stem.  I learned how to make my shadows a bright white from Laura.  I really like how her dark and light shadows contrast.  Her dark shadows make the white shadows look really white and they pop off the paper.  If I had a do-over, I would make my pumpkin more proportional.  By this, I mean that I would look at the pumpkin a little harder and try to get the shapes exact.  I think that the best part of my drawing is the pieces that come off of the stem.  I think these look really tangled and twisted just like they did on the actual pumpkin.  I think that these make my pumpkin look very realistic.

Challenge #5

 
The first 2 pictures I took are of a lamp that casted dark shadows in the back.  The third picture is of my dog coming out of the darkness and into the light.  The fourth picture is of my house at night.  The fifth picture is of a shell that I thought had really cool shadows.

Challenge #4

I obsess about softball

Inspire Drawing

My goals were to draw the shadows that I could see from the model.  I accomplished this goal by mapping out the shadows, getting the right shade of color, and then blending the pencil together to minimize the amount of lines of shading from the pencils.  My drawing is about dramatic shadows and reflecting light.  The shadows in the picture make the letters.  The most difficult challenge I encountered was the lighting moving.  Every time I went back to work on my shadows and drawing, the light was always moved.  I tried my best to get the light where it was so I could draw it.  I took a picture of the model with the light the first time I set it up, so every time I set up my model again, I tried to get it exactly like the picture I took.  My drawing really works where the really dark shadows are.  The shadows make the letters pop out of the paper.  Something that I learned was how to use the different pencils.  Before the drawing, I didn’t know what pencils to use when.  After the drawing, I know how to use them all.  Connie Hayes was my mentor for this because she used a lot of color and I used a bunch of different shades of pencil.  I learned how to do light shadows in the background from Laura.  I think she did a really good job with her background.  The background really makes the letters stand out.  If I had a do over I would have not blended the pencil together.  I think it would have looked better with just the shading and not the blending.  The blending made the pencil go all over the paper and this was a problem for the white places of the paper.  The thing I feel best about my drawing was the shadows cast on the letters.  I think this is the best thing because it makes the letters come off the page.