Exercise (2) Compositional Studies Of Natural Objects.

    Drawing of some conkers and their shells in pencil
    and graphite stick, working back into it with a rubber.
    Working on the marks and thinking about how the blocks of tone and where they are  affect the composition,
    I mean that even if you had a well laid out set of items but had the light coming from the wrong  
    direction, consequently creating ugly shadows and a unbalanced look, making a unpleasing effect.
    So, something to bear in mind and take into account.


    Ink and wash.
    Enjoyed doing these sketches enormously. Looking at the shapes and the angles that they make.


    Throughout these drawings I tried to find and emphasize shapes that would lead the eye into the
    drawing.

    Here it the same drawing as above but I put some red lines over the top ("post-production" so to speak.)
    Hopefully the lines I put on are accurate to what the human eye really does when looking at the sketch.
 





 


    Some different media.

    pencil and watercolour,

    graphite.

    Two tones of conté sticks, On this sketch and the one above, I tried to worked fast with quick lines.

    and with with coloured fineliners and watercolour.


    Quick dip in pen sketch of deer's skull.


    fineliner,


Blue and black watercolour and fineliner,

Sepia ink and watercolour,



    blue support and three different colours of conté sticks,


   Here I have a taupe colour for a support and I used a mixture of red chalk and black, brown and white conté.
   I was reading about the "The Golden Mean" (or "The Golden Proportion") and had a bash at putting it into effect on this still life.


One of my ideas throughout this exercise (and also the one before it) was to try and keep the viewer's eye on the piece of art work as long as possible, and to lead the eye around the composition , and not to let the viewer's eye drift off at the first glance.
I am trying to think about the underlying geometric shapes too.