Final Exam Questions
1) I believe that my best project in this class was my drawing of the diner. This is because I like the composition of it and I think it's interesting. The way I used the technique one point perspective makes it look more realistic as the objects repeat back into the space. I became more familiar with the use of different kinds of graphite pencils, as well as learned how to blend using a tortillion. In the future, I definitely would use this information in my new pieces. I went through a very long process of compositional sketches and adding value. These took especially a long time because of my indecisiveness with planning and how my piece incorporates so many different objects. It took too long to finish everything, but I am pleased with the end result.
2) This project I felt was my least successful. It doesn't look realistic, the line work is bad, and overall it just looks sloppy. I think this is because I tried not to spend too much time on it, but ended up resulting in bad work. I also didn't enjoy working with the waxy crayon like materials that we had to use for this. I like to be able to build up layers fast, and with those types of pastels it can't be done. If I could do this piece over again, I think I would want to be patient and take my time with it. I would have also used a lighter sheet of paper since I'm less used to the black ones. It also needs more highlights, contrast, value, color, and better lines near the ends of the wrinkles of the candy.
3) The first photo is a perspective drawing of Legos from the beginning of the semester, and the second is a piano. In both I used colored pencils. From comparing these two we can definitely see that over time I've become able to transition from one color to the next than I could before. once I started using prisma colors that definitely helped it. While drawing the Legos, I had a hard time figuring out the correct size of things. When making the second drawing, I struggled a lot less with finding which proportions were correct in perspective. I think I have a better understanding of the light sources and shadows, as well as certain details, which is shown in the hand in the second drawing.
4) The contour hand drawings and the watercolor mini lessons I think were the most beneficial to me. The contour drawings taught me how to move my hand through the pen with my eye to copy the same shape of the object I was looking at. This helped me later on in bigger projects like drawing the skeleton. I think now I'm better able to accurately resemble shape and proportion. I also enjoyed learning how to use watercolors. Obviously I still need some practice but I think I'll have a good start. In the future I could definitely incorporate the strategies that we're shown to us that can manipulate the material to show texture or other interesting things. Learning how to use the watercolors by looking at apples definitely helped me understand how to use color line and texture with that material.
5) My favorite materials that I've worked with over the course of this semester would probably include graphite pencils. I like these three because it's not very messy, unlike the clay or acrylic paint. I like using the different pencils because the different scales allow me to change the values and blend shades easily as well as add in smaller details. It's also great that I'm able to erase them, because I make a lot of mistakes and not a lot of materials are as reversible as that. I like being able to blend and smudge to have value with my finger or a tortillion, because it's not as easy to do that with colored pencils. Although this is also a disadvantage because I'm lefty and i often end up amusing the picture on accident and it makes it look sloppier. Another thing that i don't really like about using them would probably be the lack of color. Even though a pencil drawing may be really good, a colorful painting or drawing is definitely more attention grabbing. It's also harder to work with pencil on a larger scale because it takes a very long time.