Reductive Drawing: Meaningful Object

This project aims to draw a still life of five object that is meaningful to you. The objective is to create tonal and value drawings using a reductive process, erasing, to get the tone and values.

The material used for this project were vine charcoal, willow charcoal, charcoal pencil, erasers of all kinds, and a make-up sponge.

The process of drawing this piece was a lot of trial and error. I had picked a squish-mellow, a coffee container, a journal, a camera, and a plant. Setting up where I could draw my still life was puzzling, so I set the up to what I felt best showcased the object. After finding the best positioning, I start the drawing. Working with vine charcoal on a big piece of paper was hard; it got messy quickly. Charcoal is easily erased even by the finger, so I often end up making marks that were not meant to be there. Doing detailed work with the vine charcoal was challenging. They were too thick in some cases to make a small drawing. Since the objective of this piece was to erase, I did a lot of erasing; erasing was the easy part when I messed up. However, erasing to take the right amount of value was hard. I used the make-up sponge to erase and start over or make the background or object lighter. I also used a mechanical pencil eraser for a more detailed area. The kneaded eraser was another helpful tool for achieving my Drawing. I used charcoal in areas where value needed to be added on that was hard to with vine charcoal. I didn’t use the charcoal pencil much other than that part. Overall, this piece was very time-consuming, but I loved the piece; I loved how it turned out.

Feedback

The feedback I got from this particular piece, I don’t remember a lot, but that it was a good piece. The positioning was good, but the object’s placement was awkward. I also think the placement could have been better, and my values were lighter.

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