These are the finished pieces for my background project.
I'm really happy with my drawings, and even more so with my marks.
In the first picture; I feel there are places I could have made darker to give a sense of more depth and colour. Furthermore, I could even have used a different medium to draw or paint together to build up a texture or shading. I got slightly confused with the brief and instead of making the picture all pencil and shading, I made it monochrome with greens and browns, working on a pencil-shaded basis. I sat out on Falmouth Campus drawing the big ancient oak tree in the rain for an hour to get the basic outline and rough distance markers with trees. If I could add to it now I would put in more fine detail like branches. My favorite thing about the picture is the dandelions in the closer section of the drawing and houses right in the distance between the branches of the trees.
In the second drawing; I really enjoyed thinking this idea up, and putting in the really dark shadows using such an over-exaggerated light source. It didn't come out quite as sinister as I imagined, but I think that's because of my un-sinister, rather friendly looking puppets which I do like. I learn ALOT about using shadow in coloured objects and also in rooms where generally shadows are. For example, Cathy told us that the floor is usually light and under the table is always very dark, which I added last to my picture which I think really finished it off. If I did it again I would add more shadows to the edges of the picture to give a sense of the light being less broad in the area as it would realistically be much smaller. My favorite thing about the picture is the clown; I think he looks really realistic and I think I drew the colours and shading really well and shadowed him nicely.
The third drawing; this is my favorite one. It took the longest and was my first one. Cathy at the beginning of the brief told us to read books to spark our imaginations. I got my inspiration for it from a set of Winnie The Pooh CD audio books my Mum got me for Christmas, coz everyone can learn something from Winnie The Pooh, from a picnic scene. I made the central picnic items pinky-red as Cathy said this was a good idea to bring the focus through the centre of the drawing. If I were to add to this drawing now I would make the trees in the distance less defined to make them seem further away. Also I would paint the picture in a landscape position as this is more fitting to the painting's purpose of being a animation background. My favorite thing about the picture is the food on the blanket, especially the cake slice closest to the viewer and jelly as I think they look well-stylized and would fit in well in a animation.
I spent about 8/10 hours on each drawing and I didn't want to over-colour or add too much detail in places that were far away to give a more realistic sense of space and distance so made myself put down the drawings when I came to a certain point.
When I finished the drawings and paintings I was slightly disappointed as I felt they didn't look real enough and I really struggled with creating a sense of distance in them, going against my pre-conceptions of how to draw spaces. Although looking at them now I think I was too critical and tried my hardest and got a great outcome from it.
I really enjoyed this brief and will continue to draw from still life and my imagination and feel i've learnt so much from this task I'm really glad to have done it.
