When we were first assigned this our next assignment, I was a bit overwhelmed because I didn’t know where to begin. I wanted to keep things as simple as I could as to not overwhelm myself, but still wanted to push myself to try new techniques. When trying to decide on my objects, I couldn’t figure out how I wanted to formulate them, but knew I wanted to keep it to things that I see or use all the time. This is why I chose the four objects (i.e. coffee up, mask, agenda, and pencil pouch) that I did because I use them all the time and they all had shapes that I thought I would be able to draw.
After choosing my photos, I did some larger thumbnails to figure out the composition of the objects, make sure I was hitting all four edges, and working to draw the shapes. These thumbnails can be seen in the images below. I really enjoyed working on the coffee cups in particular, but, overall, I felt like I was able to create a good composition out of the objects.
After completing the thumbnails, I worked on the texture study to try to culminate some of those texture drawing skills before I tried to transfer my thumbnail to larger paper to work on as my final product.
Although I was apprehensive, after I completed my texture study, it was time to work on my final product. I first worked to get my composition of my objects right on the bigger paper, which took several tries. After I finally got them where I wanted them, I started to work on the back wall. I knew I wanted to do stippling because it reflected the dotted texture seen on the wall. I used the charcoal and mars pencils on this part. This took a lot more patience than I anticipated, but I was able to get, especially the corner, to look how I wanted. If I could go back, I would probably add a bit more to the lighter side, but I also wanted to get a highlight there and was struggling to keep it lighter. After the back wall, I used the india inc to create the tiled texture. I very much enjoyed this process, as it made me feel like a little kid in art class. However, I did have to go back in with a sharpie afterwards to clean up the edges. After this, I worked on the pencil pouch, which was probably my least favorite object. I used the ebony pencil and the mars pencil, but it just didn’t turn out like I anticipated with the texture. I used brown paper to create the mask and the cup holder because I wanted some 3D texture to be present in my piece. I used the orange conte on the agenda. Originally I tried to draw flowers, but it wasn’t working out and trying to erase it was messing with the india inc of the tiles, so I just decided to make it solid orange. Finally, I used the vinyl charcoal to do the coffee cup. I think this was my most successful use of shadows and highlights in this work, and so it looks the most realistic, which is why I am most proud of it. The rest of the background at the top needed to be tied into the piece, so I decided to use the brown paper there as well.
Overall, I am proud that I was able to complete this piece. I am decently happy with the way it turned out and that I was able to learn to use new skills in the process.
