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.