Charcoal tutorial

I would really like to redo my first piece and improve my charcoal portrait skills; therefor, this is the link to a video that demonstrates charcoal portrait drawing.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFEIJMzAZK4

Summer Art 3

My final summer art piece is a still life of a pair of sunglasses placed on top of some books. This art piece is titled “Summer Reading.” I chose to draw this still life because we were given the choice to draw something ordinary in an unordinary place. I felt that, it being summer, the sunglasses would appear random and unordinary among a pile of books, because when wearing sunglasses, especially inside, it can be difficult to read. This piece has a high light on the left lenses, which comes from the light source. It allows the books under the glasses to be apparent behind the dark lenses of the glasses. This photo-realism art piece is done from a real life, still life. The point of view emphasizes the interesting lines and shapes of the glasses. The Harmony apparent among the books makes the viewer know that all of the objects in the background are books. The contrast of the glasses makes them the center of interest, or focal point, because they are generally the largest and darkest aspects of the pencil drawing. In this piece, I struggled with makes the background as interesting as the focal point. I drew them with hard edges at first, but I feel that by adding the lamp base to the background, it made the piece more interesting and not as isolated. It added something interesting to the boring negative space. 

Summer Art 2

My second art piece was done with newspaper clippings, known as a collage, and it is a picture of my friend Taylor. I was very satisfied with this piece, because I feel that I captured the different value changes on her face with the use of Newspaper accurately. The shadows and highlights on the face are visible, and the hair is broken up and appears realistic because of the detailing and strands of hair depicted. The broken up paper clippings create movement and express the realistic idea that her hair is blowing in the wind.  The background, being different shades of blue hues, adds interest and depth to the art piece. It also adds isolation and perspective to the art piece. The gradual change in shades of blue creates perspective. As the hue of the blue becomes lighter, she appears to be farther back; therefore, the right side of her face appears to be closer from the viewer’s point of view. At first, I struggled with the proportions of her nose and face; however, I feel that I was able to work out those problems. 

Summer Art

For my first summer art assignment, I decided to explore charcoal on brown paper. For this project, I chose to use a draw my cousin, Keeli. The picture I chose ended up not being suitable for the assignment, and the art piece did not hold very high expectations. Therefore, I chose to discard the assignment and not use it. The proportions and highlights on the face were not accurate and they appeared awkward. I distorted her face and there was not a good contrast of lights and darks on her face to make the art piece interesting enough.