Exercise 2: Observing shadow using blocks of tone

I decided to work on light brown paper and have it act as a lighter mid tone. I then used black charcoal for my shading and white charcoal for my lightest tone. I found it difficult to create a smooth transition from light to dark.

Looking back I feel perhaps I should have embraced the rougher shading techniques explored in the next exercise of this project. I find that my drawing style tends to change depending on what medium that I am working with. I also find that I tend to be afraid of making my drawings too dark and so end up making them much too light.

Exercise 1: Groups of objects

After setting up my objects I drew their shapes with pencil before using my ink and dip pen.

I had initially intended on using just my dip pen. I used quick spontaneous gestures to shape and shade my objects. I made made looser movements for the lighter areas and tighter movements for the darker areas.

I was not satisfied with the effect of using only the dip pen so used a paintbrush and mixed the ink with water to do more shading. In some areas I worked with a paintbrush dipped only in water to make the pen lines bleed. I worked back and forth with the brush and pen until I was happy with the drawing.

Exercise 1: Experimenting with expressive lines and marks

This exercise took me a good few days to complete as I found myself struggling to completely submerge myself into some of the emotions. I kept a blank page on my drawing board at all timed so that I’d always be prepared to start drawing immediately.

Grief was inspired by the news of the death of a family friend who I’d known for most of my life. At first I felt somewhat guilty for using her death as inspiration to draw for merely an exercise but I decided to think of it as a dedication it to her instead.

To become calm I decided to take a nap and then meditate for a while and asked my family to not disturb me for risk of changing my mood.

I did anger after my brother’s significant other finished all our yogurt (we are all huge yogurt fans in our house), then bought more yogurt and forbid anyone from eating it because she “payed for it herself”. I’ll stop there before I go on a rant.

I managed to achieve joy by fangirling over my favourite book series and listening to my favourite music.

Exercise 1: Warm-up – temporary drawings.

The first one I tried in this exercise was the suggested soap in the sink activity. I started off with green dish soap then went in with my orange shampoo. After realizing that I couldn’t control the patterns made, I decided to leave it to chance. The way the colours reacted with each other, not blending unless provoked, and how the patterns continued to shift as gravity took over was an interesting display of temporary line-work.

After playing around with the soap I decided to experiment a bit with ink. I dripped a singe drop in hoping it would mix with the drops of water sitting on the walls of the sink but it only made one solid black line. I then got close and blew at the line of ink and to my pleasant surprise this happened. It was as though small patches of sink became ink-phobic so to speak and in those patches there were small lines like the veins on a leaf. I love experimentation with different mediums and sometimes very interesting things happen. Like with the soap as time went by the lines changed and so the second image is from a few minutes later.

Next I want outside to look for natural temporary lines. At first I wanted to take a picture of the circular ripples in the pool but became entranced by the reflections in the water instead. I liked how with the ripples the reflection is never still and is constantly changing and so I decided to use it in this exercise.

When I was outside I caught a glimpse of the shadow of a tree on the wall. I thought of how shadows change and move with the sun and how the wind blowing through the trees cause their shadows to shift around.

This exercise has helped me see things differently as to what makes things permanent or temporary and how things can change and develop due to time of environmental changes.