Week 3 Homework: The Still Life 'Self Portrait'

Still Life 'Self Portrait'.

Purpose of the exercise:

To practice further some of the continuous line drawing and shading skills we looked at in last weeks class.

Brief:

Create a 'still life' out of objects that best represents you as a person. The objects should reflect your personality, how you are feeling at the time and your hobbies. Think of the collection of objects you put together as a visual metaphor of who you are. Be as creative as you like. Spend at least an 2 hours on this exercise, more if needed.

Instructions:

Drawing 1: Create a continuous line drawing only of you self-portrait objects as we did in class. Challenge yourself to look as little as possible at your paper and keep your pen moving all the time. Work fairly slowly and only take a sneaky look to check out your drawing every now and again. Allow your mistakes to remain on the page.

Drawing 2: Create a tonal drawing only of your self-portrait still life using a variety of 2B, 3B, 4B pencils and/or charcoal. Spend a few minutes looking at the objects, paying special attention to the tonal range and the negative space. Observe where the darkest and lightest areas are. You will probably notice that the dark side of an object will make the negative space immediately next to it look lighter, and the light side of the object will make the negative space next to it appear darker. You might start by discovering the boundaries of the object by putting tone in the negative space, and finding the edge of the object. Then work on the object and the negative space simultaneously and work from larger shapes of tone to smaller ones. Remember to work on the drawing as a whole and not simply focus on one area before moving on to the next. No object exists in isolation and our perception of the object is greatly influenced by what exists around/behind it.
 
Drawing 3: Create a combined tonal and continuous line drawing using coloured pencils and/or pastels to create the tone. Start with the tonal drawing first to avoid simply 'colouring in' your line drawing. As before try and look as little as possible at your paper. Experiment with changing your angle of view when switching between tone and line.

Remember to date and sign your work.