Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Pastel Still Life Project

    The pastel still life project was where art one students in my class were told to draw an arrangement of items using oil pastels. We had our own freedom to choose what items we used for the arrangement. I chose to use 5 Twix bars for several reasons. Their rectangular shape made them easily arrangable, the reflective wrapper would make it easy for me to pinpoint where to put highlights and value in the pastel drawing, and I could eat them after I completed the assignment (Just kidding!). 
   My class was asked to draw thumbnail sketches as guidelines for how we wanted to arrange our items. A thumbnail sketch is a small drawing that portrays (in less detail) how an artist is going to arrange the final product. An artist sometimes composes more than one thumbnail sketch to see which setup is ideal for the final project. A useful tool when making a thumbnail sketch is a viewfinder. It gives you a perspective on how much room an artist will have available for the final result. 
   When attempting to compose a 3-dimensional drawing, an artist has to keep the idea of value in mind. Value is the portrayal of the lights and darks of an object in a painting or drawing. In order to portray value, I used different amounts of pressure when working with pastels. This can help create rounded edges, cast shadows, etc. Creating a light source is important because it shows you where highlighting and shadows need to be placed. I created my light source in the corner of the pastel drawing because it was similar to the lighting I had in real life.

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