Part 2 Project 1 Ex1

In the build up to another still life I have to draw my items in a variety of poses paying attention to composition.  The items I have chosen to draw are a pot with paintbrushes in, a half used roll of kitchen paper and a large hake brush. These items are becoming increasingly important to me as I learn to draw and the hake brush is a new one bought especially for my water colour workshop a week on Saturday.  

With the course notes in my mind  I have tried three ways to present my selection.

My three compositions

All  the sketches have natural light coming from the left.

The top one seems obvious and not really very interesting so I moved the kitchen roll alongside the pot and put the hake brush with the others in the pot.  Although the kitchen roll extends forward there's still not much life to it.

The third sketch is the one I prefer because it has depth and the proportions are good.  The kitchen roll leads the eye in and the propped brush allows it to continue upwards.  I plan to do another sketch but move the kitchen roll a little further backwards.

I've spent a little longer on this because I think it's the direction I'm going to take.  I've had problems with the brushes.  In reality some face forward and some backwards and I'm not sure I've quite got it right.

This is the composition I'm going to use because it's more dynamic than the others.

Since I did this sketch I received my tutor report for Part 1 and there's a comment on composition that has sent me scuttling to my books. (See next post)

There's also the suggestion that I try drawing single items and try not to tighten up.  I put some of my items to one side and went back to the technique from Maslen and Southern using two pencils taped together.  I then added some colour with felt tips and soft pastel.  I've had trouble with getting decent images with my camera and prefer to scan but I've only an A4 scanner.  That is the reason the top of the paintbrush is missing.

Brushes in a pot.

There is no solid outline to the pot and this makes it quite interesting.

A crop showing the pot

My tutor has encouraged me to use cropping to explore the possibilities so I had another go.

I think this scribble way to capture an image works for me.  Once I've worked on the basic shape a bit I can achieve both depth and texture.  I'll see what my reading on composition throws up then look at this work again and maybe do a sort of critique.