Assignment One: made objects

For this composition, I brought together some decorating equipment - a roller tray and a roller with fluffy surface; a scraper; a packet of wallpaper paste; paint-brush; sheet of sandpaper; wallpaper scissors.

Both the scissors and scraper are a bit rusty, so were not shiny, except for the handles of the scissors. The metal shaft of the paint-brush was chrome and therefore quite shiny.

I've stuck mainly to B and 4B pencils, with a bit of soft graphite pencils to get more definition here and there.

Assignment One: Natural Forms in colour

I have to admit I've struggled with this, both deciding what to use and then how to arrange the objects. I've got three teazles and a few shells, and I've arranged them on a piece of hessian.

For a start, how to depict hessian. I experimented with trying to draw the hessian thread by thread, but that was not only very slow, but also not very effective. So I ended up trying the frottage technique, holding a piece of hessian under the paper. The effect was moderately successful, especially once I'd drawn in the rough edge of the hessian, but it was hard to show the folds in the material.

The big conch shell is quite shiny and the light on it produced a nice curved stripe along the top - but I've not managed to reproduce that very well. I tried using charcoal and bringing out the shine by applying a rubber along it, but it's not very effective.

The clam shell also gave me quite a lot of trouble, but I've eventually managed to convey something of its shape after several false attempts.

I've added some colour to show the interesting colouring of the conch shells and the conical one.

I considered adding a thin wash of colour for the hessian (see bottom lefthand corner) but immediately realised it was going to make the paper curl, so I stopped and applied kitchen paper to try and mop it up.

Assignment 1: initial sketch

This was a first attempt at the 'natural forms' composition for the first assignment.

I've agonised about getting a decent composition, and I'm not entirely happy with this composition of shells and teazles on a sheet of hessian.

Getting the shiny surfaces of the big conch to show proved difficult, and I've not worked out yet how to express the surface of the hessian.

Anyway, this is the first go at it...(using pencil, some graphite pencil, and some charcoal)

Shell study

In preparation for my first assignment, I've acquired some shells for the natural forms composition.

This is just an initial sketch of one of the small shells I plan to use. It's got attractive brown swirls on rhe exterior, which I'm not sure come across in the drawing.

I lit the shell with an overhead lamp, hence the sharp shadow.

Vase of dahlias

We bought some white and yellow dahlias in the market and added an anemone from the garden, which I thought looked rather nice in a small vase.

It was a good opportunity to use some of the techniques learned so far, and also to try and capture the shape and structure of the dahlia blooms. It was actually quite difficult as the blooms are made up of many tightly-knit petals, each of which throws a shadow on its surrounding petals.

I also wanted to convey the way the water changed the shape and direction of the stems. I did the drawing outdoors in bright sunshine, so there were some strong shadows.

I decided to add some colour as an afterthought, which I think was a bit of a mistake because I'd already used a lot of pencil for shadow.

Two views of a log

In preparation for the first assignment, I went looking for some "natural forms" that would fit a composition, and discovered this log. It has some broken bark on it, and it was also small enough to fit into a rucksack.

I had to attempts at it, first just with pencil. But I felt it needed something more to bring out the various elements, so I just added a little bit of colour for the bark.

I then had another go using a mix of graphite pencil and then with charcoal which I applied a bit more freely to see if that improved things. On the whole, I think I prefer the more detailed first one, with the colour added.