Week 4: Homework

Drawing Your Hand Holding Different Household Objects

This homework was to continue work on foreshortening by drawing our hand holding 5 different objects. We were told the objects should all be different and to think about which angles and compositions we used. One line from the homework task that I tried to remember going through the task was :

'Make your drawing as exciting to you as it should be to the viewer.'

I felt that this was important because sometimes it's easy to forget the purpose of a drawing and get slack with composition and visual impact. 

The first drawing I did I didn't find too hard, and quite liked, but I felt it was a pretty standard pencil drawing without anything too special to make it stand out. I think this is because I was a bit cautious going into the task and was worrying about being able to get the drawings proportional because of how many issues I'd faced in class on Monday.

However, I decided to change tactic and ended up experimenting with a series of left hand drawings, which I straight away found a lot more visually exciting and not only that - but also exciting to draw! I really don't know what it is, but drawing with my left hand I find myself able to achieve much more accurate results. This was ideal for the hand drawings, as there are so many tricky angles, tones and forms within hands especially when holding objects, so the loose left-handed linework suits this perfectly. I ended up even going back and redrawing my first drawing in left hand, and when you compare the two it's clear which is more effective.

Having found this technique so inspiring, I even went back and redrew a self portrait using this technique, because from the start I hadn't been happy with my self portrait task. I was surprised and pleased with this result, which firstly I can relate to myself a lot more, and contains so much more character than my first attempts. It also finally feels like my work, as it's a style that I love to work in. I feel like I have now managed to make a self portrait that does my drawing justice, because before I just always felt like I could do better and be more unique with it.

I was happy with my left handed pencil drawings but for the homework task to be properly completed and for me to improve my skills, I wanted to add more than just pencil. I have left a couple of the drawings without much else, simply because I feel they are important as showing my studies of proportion and perspective, and my technical drawing skills. For many of the other hand studies however I added paint or tone or both. The first hand drawing I had made, which I felt was rather weak (and was done with my right hand) came to life when I chose to frame it with dark streaks of Indian ink. It makes the focal point of the hand holding the perfume bottle jump out at you from the page, and draws the eye to the areas of contrast.

30 MINS / INK AND 2B PENCIL

The next drawing has been left as pencil but I repeated the drawing multiple times so that the composition is overlaid and more visually interesting. I definitely think this drawing would benefit from some colour, but I am such a fan of the linework that it would be a real shame to cover it up! This may be an opportunity to go back and add fineliner or biro, so the lines aren't lost, but they are defined more clearly.

20 MINS / DRAWING WITH BOTH HANDS / 2B PENCIL

Next is my first paint study of a hand. I used goache and pencil for this piece, and built the goache up in layers to clearly show shadows and highlights. The colours I chose complement each other well, and I think on the whole the composition is successful. I'm a little disappointed with the background colour I chose, which looks very messy and doesn't reallt strengthen the image in any way. In fact, a few areas of the hand don;t stand out as much as I would like, and this could be down to the background. I also don't think I left enough space for highlights, which would have helped the hand look more 3D and less flat. I do really like the thumb area especially though, for I feel I managed to observe and capture its shape very well and the tone is nicely captured with the chosen colours.

40 MINS / COLOUR TONAL STUDY / GOACHE AND PENCIL

I used charcoal for the next study, and this therefore took me a little longer. I chose to draw my hand holding material as a challenge to myself, because I knew how many folds and tones would be created with this! The drawing came out much better than I expected and the charcoal lent itself nicely to the shadows, and because I was easily able to smudge it, it created good midtones. I left the white paper showing through for highlights. While I think the piece is strong, I do think the contrast needs further developing in order to bring the hand out from the rest of the drawing. Despite this, I'm happy with the accuracy of the hand and realistic appearance of the material.

40 MINS / CHARCOAL TONAL DRAWING

The next drawing took my the longest of all the homework tasks, because I used watercolour which require more patience and detailed brushstrokes. I chose to use this for the drawing as I knew watercolour would work well to create the shadow stretching out from under the hand, and I fancied trying paint again and improving with my layering. I found the watercolour nice to layer as it wasn't too opaque so different colours could show through each other. I worked with a palette based around one main colour - green, which gave the image a consistent and well-rounded feel, linking every tone together. One thing I notice now is that the drawing's composition could be stronger, as it is just coming onto the middle of the page from nowhere. This is maybe a drawing I should have done landscape. The background could be livened up or at least filled with a larger drawing. I'm going to try to stop resisting filling an entire page.

50 MINS / PENCIL AND WATERCOLOURS

Lastly, we have the drawing of the hand holding the perfume bottle which is redrawn from the first image. Now that I have added the ink the the first image, the drawings exist in very separate styles and I'm happy to have both of them to compare and analyse. I've left this image pencil as well because I think it's my strongest of all the hand drawings, the proportions and perspective are all correct and the hand has a sense of life about it. I don't want to lose this lightness by adding anything more heavy to it. I think it is important sometimes to know when to stop with a drawing so that it's most effective, and for me the drawing is often most useful when I can study the outline and how its been drawn.

15 MINS / LEFT HANDED DRAWING / 4H PENCIL

This exercise was definitely a challenge but a lot of fun, and I enjoyed experimenting with medium, composition and perspective as I went along. I feel that every drawing I make helps me understand more!