Exhibition Text:
The intentions of the Life Drawing was to analyze an object, break it down to rough shapes, then build up the the value to in the end have a three-dimensional look. Life Drawing also familiarized me with charcoal and how it acts.
The Process:
The process of Life Drawing started with getting a Taxidermy animal or object placed in front of you. I got a frog in a jar of liquid. Then I got four minutes to analyze my frog; look at it from all angles, decide which angle I liked the best, and place it in that direction. Once I had my position for the frog I got vine charcoal to sketch out the initial shapes and make the whole paper a light grey.
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Reflection:
I had difficulties with deciding how dark I wanted to make the Frog. The Frog was very pail and looked fragile but the point of Life Drawing was to create a rich smooth figure. In the end, I am happy with the product but I could have made him slightly more pronounced. I also had a hard time with the eyeball because it looked glazed over and I was afraid with the materials given I wasn't going to be able to create that effect. This was an irrational fear because the charcoal actually helped to create the glazed-over effect.
On the second studio day, we got the choice to add color. I decided to stick with the black compressed charcoal and vine charcoal because there wasn't much color to add to the pale frog and I felt that the black made it richer. One limitation though was how powerful the compressed charcoal was. A little went a long way with the compressed charcoal and I had to be aware when using it. I did like however how well the charcoal blended. My favorite part of the whole piece is the right leg. That leg blended the best and I love how muscular it turned out, it makes the frog look majestic. I do not like the top of the jar though, it was very hard to use the charcoal to create a tape effect so it just looks sloppy to me.
Overall the process of creating Life Drawing was super fun. I learned how to quickly look at the form of an object and just get down shapes on paper. I also learned how to create shapes without an outline and to build up value till you have the desired effect. Thanks to the introduction to compressed and vine charcoal I may use it in the future.
On the second studio day, we got the choice to add color. I decided to stick with the black compressed charcoal and vine charcoal because there wasn't much color to add to the pale frog and I felt that the black made it richer. One limitation though was how powerful the compressed charcoal was. A little went a long way with the compressed charcoal and I had to be aware when using it. I did like however how well the charcoal blended. My favorite part of the whole piece is the right leg. That leg blended the best and I love how muscular it turned out, it makes the frog look majestic. I do not like the top of the jar though, it was very hard to use the charcoal to create a tape effect so it just looks sloppy to me.
Overall the process of creating Life Drawing was super fun. I learned how to quickly look at the form of an object and just get down shapes on paper. I also learned how to create shapes without an outline and to build up value till you have the desired effect. Thanks to the introduction to compressed and vine charcoal I may use it in the future.