Q2 Final Project Submission

For my Q2 benchmark, I  decided to work on a still life drawing. The goal of this project was to create a representation of 2-4 inanimate objects. This representation must be done from life, and not from your imagination. For my still life, I decided to draw a stack on books on type of each other with a piece of paper sticking out between the books. I want my work to communicate to the audience how drawing can really bring something like a still life drawing to life. This work really does not reflect my culture in any way.  However, still, life drawing has been done throughout art history.

For my still life drawing, I decided to keep my picture blank and white. I wanted to challenge myself to see if I can just use charcoal pencil and sticks to create a realistic drawing without any color. I wanted to put together a still life representation that I know I could incorporate wide ranges of values, lines, and textures within my drawing. In my drawing, I tried using different shading techniques. Each book had a different type of shading work. I did blending, stippling, hatching, and smudging. My current work relates to my previous work because I have completed a still life drawing before. The process was pretty much the same for the current art project I am work on now and the one I have done previously. In my opinion, the process for the still life drawing was very simple. I say this because I chose the still life drawing because I already was thinking about what I wanted to draw when reading over the project description.  After that, I knew that I just had to gather my objects and being doing a preliminary sketch in my sketchbook to see if I liked what I wanted to draw.  Artists who have similar work to mines would be a famous painter named Willem Kalf. He was a Dutch painter who was known for his still life drawings. An example of one of his most famous still lifes would be http://collection.imamuseum.org/artwork/57562/

A certain technique that is important in a still life drawing is how detailed and realistic you make the drawing. You want to make the still life drawing come to life. It's it important to know how you different values, lines and textures in your drawing to achieve your real vision. A new technique I learned and experimented with in the process of making my art pieces was manipulation. I had learned this by manipulating different art materials to create different effects in my drawing. I am most proud of my shading work. I feel like I spent the most time on that than anything else in the drawing. I really wanted to make it look nice. I  would personally change the size of the paper for the project. I would probably make the paper size bigger because I think it would look better in my opinion. I learned that I really enjoy making still life drawing. It a fun way to play around with different art techniques.