DifficultiesAfter I spend a couple lessons working on individual sections pf the weed to practice my techniques and see what challenges this task presented I decided it was time I try to draw a bigger section of the weed, one that had leafs thorns and stems. A combination of everything I had been working towards.
I knew this was going to be a challenge, however, I did underestimate the patience and effort required. On the right my first attempts at drawing the weed pictured above can be seen. When I was in the process of drawing this image I was extremely frustrated I looked at my weed and then at the drawing and they don't look anything alike, my drawing is two dimensional there is not pattern, and the shape seem to be too geometric to fit those depicted in the image above. This made the task infuriating because I was seeing one thing with my eyes but drawing another with my hands. Mr. Keys, sensed my frustration and helped me by showing a new method to draw weeds, one that was broken down into multiple sections that eventually will all come together to form the weed, this process and the discussions leading up to it will be documented below. |
Image 1
This image shows what Mr. Keys and I first discussed. How drawings are simply an illusion of what we truly see, how art is ARTificial. This idea was further emphasized with the drawing that shows how everything we see is upside-down and our brain turns it around. From this idea of illusions I realized that the difficulty that I had in drawing the weed was not because I had the wrong pencil, but rather the wrong mindset. Image 2 The phrase written on here is what I find most important. It is a continuation of what was discussed in image 1, it reads; the map is not the territory. Which means to say that even though the map is a representation of the territory it, in itself, is not the reality. This is linked to drawing because it shows how when we draw even though we represent an object the drawing isn't the thing itself. It will always have some slight altercation because it has gone through our brains where we have morphed it. Image 3 This is an exercise I did to test something out. Mr. Keys drew the outline of the face on the left hand side and he then asked me to draw the exact same shape but mirrored. As I did so he counted how many times I looked over at the drawing, this number was thirty-seven. This exercise goes to showing that extreme attention to detail is required when I am drawing something so complex. |
Image 4
This is the first step I took in the different method of drawing the weed. In this image you can see a photocopy of the weed I chose. After this we singled out a specific area of the weed and boxed it out so I would only focus on this section. Image 5 This is the second step I took to drawing the weed. Rather than focusing on the positive space I focused on the negative space. This thinking process actually helped me a lot and I was able to focus on the basic shapes that allowed me to create the sketch in image 5. Image 6 I did this to help distinguish the negative space from the positive space. In the image you can see how all the negative space has been painted over gouache. This allowed me to concentrated solely on the positive space that now need texture and shading. Image 7 In this image I am shading the different leaves on the branch. This is a long tedious process but it is the only one that works efficiently for me to be able to create the project. |
This sketch was a quick ten minute sketch that I did towards the end of the lesson. I am actually quite pleased with the way this turned out. I used a lot of different pencils to create the different intensities that can be seen.
What I like about this is the bottom part of the weed, I enjoy the shape of it and how it curves around. However, one thing that could definitely use improving in this is the detail of the leaves and anything surrounding them. As mentioned earlier this was a very quick drawing, so I think I could have added more detail and made it more realistic with more time. |
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