Saturday 2 March 2013

Drawings: OCA Part 2 III: Project - Drawing Fruit and Vegetables in Colour - Part III

Exercise: Drawing Using Oil Pastel
& Learning Log
 
 Final Drawing: Apples, Lemons and Baby Tomatoes
Oil Pastel - A3 Yellow Textured Paper
 
For this exercise I first started to play around with the composition, I was using a couple of tangerines and apples to try and get some strong contrast between the greens and oranges. I found a composition that I was happy with and attempted a quick drawing of this with oil pastels on a piece of A4 paper. I like the result and I think the contrast works really well, however there isn’t much range in shape or size so I added some lemons into the arrangement.

I decided to try and use a textured green coloured paper but it soon became apparent after I had started filling in some of the colour that I had made the wrong choice. I did a quick experiment on some textured yellow coloured paper and found this worked much better. I also made a last minute decision to swap the tangerines for some baby tomatoes to vary the range of shapes and sizes a bit more.

I used a chrome yellow to sketch in the main shapes as it was neutral colour that was not too heavy and was apparent in all the pieces of fruit. I then used a Van Dyke Brown to pick out the darkest areas before getting started on the rest. I used a bit of vermillion in the baby tomatoes, yellow ochre in these and the lemons. I found that a yellow grey pastel I had was the perfect tone for the apples as well as the shadow cast by everything. I was aware of how colours from some pieces of fruit were reflected in other, such as the green from the apples being seen in the lemons too, this helped to intensify the colours a bit more, giving a much stronger visual impact. I found that the colours worked really well together and against the yellow paper, it did take quite a while to build up the layers on it but I am very pleased with the final result.
 
Composition studies
Charcoal - A4

Study of apples and Tangerines
Oil Pastel - A4
Learning Log

Your composition should occupy most of the paper’s surface. How much negative space do you have left?
In terms of the way the composition fits onto the page, I would say I have done quite well. The subjects in my pieces sit quite comfortably without feeling like they are crammed onto the paper but also not getting swamped by extra space.
The piece I did of the apple with two lemons using the dip pens is a bit tight as the shadow is quite near the left edge, this is because I didn’t plot out the shadow before I went ahead with it so it could do with shifting to the right a bit.
I purposely left some negative space between the fruit in the final pastel drawing. I did this so that I could get a balance between drawing the pieces of fruit individually as well as allowing them to intersect each other in places.

What have you learned from drawing the details of fruit and vegetables?
I have learnt to try and think about the objects a lot more before I begin to draw them, and to work out how some will work well together and others maybe not so much. It was also interesting to try and capture the different textures of each individual piece of fruit whilst trying to maintain the relationship between them and keep the feeling that they are all part of the same drawing.

What did you find the most challenging about this part of the course?
It was difficult to know whether a composition would really work until I started to actually draw it, this is where doing the sketches for the last piece first really helped.
 
Experiments on Coloured Paper
Oil Pastel - A4
 
 

 

Friday 1 March 2013

Drawings: OCA Part 2 III: Project - Drawing Fruit and Vegetables in Colour - Part II

Exercise: Using Markers or Dip Pens
 
 Orange, Pear and Lemons
Marker Pens - A4

Apple, Pear, Orange and Lemon
Marker Pens - A4
 
 Apple, Oranges and Lemons
Marker Pens - A4
 
I really enjoyed this exercise, both the process and the results captured my interest. Using coloured marker pens to draw with was a fairly new thing for me, I have never tried sketching anything out with them properly, so it was with a bit of trepidation that I began this exercise. It all turned out fine though and I became engrossed in building up the hatching, using the bold lines that are inevitable with marker pens. I had quite a good range of markers to utilise in these drawings and after some experimentation i dicovered that layering the dark blue and red close to each other formed a great dark tone for the shadowy parts.
 
I also produced a couple of drawings with the use of ink and dip pens. I have used dip pens before in my first assignment, but I stuck to black and sepia then, unlike in this exercise. I approached each drawing differently intentionally. With the first one I washed some rather bold strokes onto the paper with a brush, layering the red over the green where it was darkest and sketching the details in afterwards with a dip pen and black ink. The second drawing I did completely with a dip pen similar to my marker pen pieces, building up the hatching on different planes.
 
 
 Two Apples
Washed Ink and Dip Pens - A4
 
Apple and Lemons
Pen and Ink - A4
 
 

Drawings: OCA Part 2 III: Project - Drawing Fruit and Vegetables in Colour

Exercise: Using Hatching to Create Tone
 
 Studies of an Apple and Oranges
Watercolour Pencil - A4
 
 Studies of a Banana and an Apple
Highlighter - A4

Two Oranges and Lime in Wooden Bowl
Colour Pencil - A4
 
Redrawn Close-up of Previous Drawing 

I started this exercise using watercolour pencils in the first piece, beginning with the lighter ones and building the lines with darker ones like the purple and royal blues. I also experimented with highlighters though I can’t say I’m particularly pleased with the result but it was interesting to do.
 
I then positioned two oranges and a lime in a bowl and used colour pencil to draw this arrangement. I placed the bowl near a lamp to cause some strong tonal contrast and I think the highlight with the white pencil show this particularly well.
 
Just for curiosity as to whether this technique would also work well on a larger scale I used a viewfinder on the drawing and produced another one that increases the size of part of the original.