Final Still Life
Dumped
91cm x 61cm
Charcoal on paper
September 2020
This piece is a simple still life meant to show space and depth, as well as contrast and overlapping. The mug nearly covers the plant behind it, which is shown as a simple dark shadow. The objects are gathered in the middle to draw the focus on the center of the piece. The chair in the background is simple with little depth to it, to draw attention away from it and focus on the strong depths of the mug and mango.
91cm x 61cm
Charcoal on paper
September 2020
This piece is a simple still life meant to show space and depth, as well as contrast and overlapping. The mug nearly covers the plant behind it, which is shown as a simple dark shadow. The objects are gathered in the middle to draw the focus on the center of the piece. The chair in the background is simple with little depth to it, to draw attention away from it and focus on the strong depths of the mug and mango.
Still Life Process
To prepare myself for making this piece, I practiced by drawing a shoe on newsprint. I put the shoe on a shoebox on my bed and set up my drawing board just below it. I had limited options for where I could set up a drawing space so I had to get creative. The angle was kind of weird because I was looking up at the drawing but I managed to work around that. It helped to take pictures of the setup and look back at them so I didn't have to keep the setup there. Over time obviously the lighting in my room changes and I couldn't keep the setup on my bed forever so taking photos helped.
I started out by sketching the outline of the shoe, box, and bed. I did this with the vine charcoal. First, I just made vague shapes and then I separated them and cleaned up the lines. The hardest thing for this step in the process was getting the proportions right. As someone who likes drawing human figures and faces, I know how to work with proportions and it was relatively easy to work through this. In the end I think the piece turned out pretty proportionate to the original photo.
Next I did some shading with the compressed charcoal in the dark areas of the image. I defined the image a little more clearly but still left some room for tweaking things if I needed to. To get the curve of the heel of the shoe I had to clearly define the highlights and the shadows.
This is the final result. I added darker shading with the compressed charcoal by turning it sideways and moving it across the paper so it covered an area quicker. I added bright highlights on the heel so that the shoe appeared shiny and I tried to add some texture on the leather part of the shoe to make it appear like it had small folds in it. I used the side of the charcoal stick again to make the bedding it was on and everything around it to get a light, less eye catching texture so the focus would be on the shoe.
Final Still Life Process
This is the object setup I used to draw from. I put the mug on a coaster to make it more interesting, and I leaned the mango against the mug. I found a new place to set up my drawing space, I cleared off my kitchen table because the paper was too big for my drawing board. I picked something with a smoother texture (the mug) and a rougher texture (the mango) so it would hopefully contract well.
I started by outlining and lightly shading the mug and mango, as well as the coaster the mug was on. First I used the vine charcoal to outline the shape. Then I separated the objects and made it more clear as to what they were. Then I started shading. I kept it light and planned on going over it several times with the compressed charcoal to get a darker complexion. I was disappointed with how the mug turned out, so I used a tissue to smooth out the charcoal. I also used an eraser to make sharp highlights. I still don't like the final shape of the mug, I was trying to make it look more like the picture but I still think it looks too wide. I also think the mango looks too narrow in this photo especially, but I feel like I cleared that up unintentionally in the end result.
I then moved on to the chair and the plant. Shown here is the chair outline, and below is the chair shading. The shading was done in the background because the chair was white. Doing this made the chair stand out more. I would've added more detail to the chair if I had the time, I also think some of the lines were drawn too dark and effected the end result.