Project 1: Observational Drawing

The aim of this project was to look at experimenting with composition by focusing on ordinary, everyday objects. By using careful observational skills, we were asked to look at seemingly mundane items and explore the possibilities that came about from our preliminary sketches.

I began by photographing areas of my house and garden that seemed to fit the brief. Each of the images seemed to share a common theme, having a great deal of information to consider and I wondered how this would affect my drawing. My first thoughts were that this would perhaps influence the style or the media that I used.

Of the photographs taken, I then condensed my selection down to 5 images that I thought would work well for this project.

 

Next, I looked at the different areas of each composition and began with a pencil sketch of part of the sunglasses collection. This was my ‘safe’ drawing and really it just served as a way of getting into the project and getting my observational skills up and running.

As I liked the possibilities of this image, I cut up a printed copy of this to see how I could re-arrange the elements of it. Quite stupidly, I got caught up in the ‘creative moment’ and forgot to photograph this process for my blog! The resulting sketch includes these cut up collaged pieces which I have then overdrawn in markers of varying thickness to suggest an idea of clutter.

I wasn’t really sure where else to go with that composition, so I turned my attention to the pot plant. Going back to pencil for my first sketches, I looked at repeating the shape of the leaf and cropping close into the subject. I then cut up the printed copy of the photo once more, but this time rearranged the pieces to make a new image. I liked this outcome as it had an abstract quality to it. It took this idea further and used thick black marker and chalk to further simplify the elements of the plant and although it is quite different from the original photo, I think it’s still recognisable. I attempted a similar approach using the stub of a pencil but I don’t think this worked as well as the previous drawing.

 

The collection of instruments seemed to work as a series of close up crops and I drew a couple of quick sketches of two of the areas that interested me. I then experimented with overlapping all of the objects, so that they appeared transparent. I like the idea that you can see through each to areas that the eye can’t actually see. This is something I think I might come back to as I think it has possibilities.

 

The final photograph that I wanted to explore was the pile of shoes. I liked the chaos of the overlapping shoes and tangles of laces. It seemed to lend itself to an erratic style of drawing and I tried to sketch intuitively to capture the shapes without overthinking things too much.

I tried a version of the first sketch with coloured pencil but I think this distracts from the original pencil drawing. To see how it would affect the look of a cropped image, I used the same technique with a close-up view of the shoes at the front.

 

Finally, I focused on the same area, but this time drew with a continuous line not taking my pencil off the page, to add fluidity to the image. I think this is my favourite drawing as it feels as if it captures the disorganised heap of shoes. I had one more attempt, this time trying to distil the image further as I had done with the pot plant, but this did not feel as successful.

 

Reflection

This has been an interesting exercise which has made me think about the way in which an image can develop. Looking back at my original photographs, the drawings that I’ve made have evolved and become a more representational version of the objects in them and there are areas of the original images that have disappeared or been re-interpreted as I’ve drawn them. Overall, I think what I have discovered is that you can remove quite a lot of detail whilst still retaining enough information for the viewer to be able to understand what the drawing is of.

My first impressions of the clutter of objects as something that would influence the way that I drew them or the media that I chose was somewhat true (more so in the style of my sketches). What I need to remember from this is to experiment more with mark-making as I have stuck to similar methods for a lot of these drawings.