Week 1 - Basic Still Life Set-Up

A Basic Still Life Set-Up, One

This is a 3-minute sketch using a graphite stick of a piece of drapery balanced on a wooden stool and a blown up beach ball.  This sketch shows the lines and the shapes that the drapery creates as it falls over the top of the beach ball. The light from the lamp creates an up lighting effect, which makes the lines of the ball visible through the drappered cloth. This gives the illusion of a floating ball, as the stool is not visible because of the light direction. This area becomes very darkly shaded as the light doesn’t project to this area but instead travels through the transparent ball creating a crystal ball effect from underneath the cloth.

The transparency of the upper part of the cloth is shown with the detail of the ball shining through. Even with little shading it is clear to see that the bottom part of the cloth is shown to be much darker because there is no detail shining through apart from the folds on the outside of the cloth.

A Basic Still Life Set-Up, Two

This is a 15-minute sketch using a graphite stick of the same still life set up but from a different perspective view.  From this angle the upper lighting creates an aluminous effect on the top of the beach ball showing the stripes come through in very great detail. With this upper lighting and the stool from this perspective being visible it creates an almost hot air balloon illusion.

The lighting casts very hard shadows upon the already dark wooden bench, which makes it; really stand out from the material that is draped over it. The effect of this lighting creates an almost waterfall effect as the cloth gently falls from the top of the beach ball to the floor which the gradient of shading gradually getting darker the further away from the top it is.

To make this drawing better I would add in a background to make it look like a complete drawing rather than an object that could just be floating in mid air.

A Basic Still Life Set-Up, Three

This is a 30-minute drawing using charcoal using the same still life set up but with a different perspective view.  From this angle the bottom of the ball is visible, as the drapery does not fall over this part. This shows the transparency of the ball illuminated by the upward facing light. The drapery around the light appears to be highlighted by the brightness of the light compared to the cloth that is on the opposite side of the light. The light does not hit this area of the cloth creating very hard shadows.

The folds in the drapery create even darker shadows which makes it impossible to see through in comparison to the looser material where it is highly visible to see through as the stripes in the beach ball shines through dramatically.

The charcoal shows great gradient of shading from the lightest to the darkest which creates the illusion of some form of bright light. The charcoal is used in its darkest form with no smudging to create the dark shadows which are cast upon the cloth where as the putty rubber has been used to pick out the highlighted areas. These two contrast greatly to show the drastic change in lighting.

To improve upon this drawing I would like to have added in greatly detail  to the shading upon the cloth and with an added background I think this would have drastically improved upon this whole drawing.