Shading techniques

 

This weeks task's was about trying out new shading techniques. I really enjoyed this week's task as I have never had the opportunity to try out any other techniques apart from basic blended shading. By the end of the piece I found that I enjoyed shading using hatching and cross hatching more so than basic shading. I love the texture and sharp shadows you can create with this method. Before starting the final still life composition, I experimented with a range of techniques by drawing single objects. I used hatching, cross hatching, Pointillism, scribble and charcoal. From this exercise, I found that I really enjoyed hatching and the technique was something I wanted to take forward into my final still life. I also enjoyed cross hatching and found this more challenging than hatching. I really liked how cross hatching worked on more rounded surfaces and hatching looked great on more flat ones. My charcoal piece however, was not so successful. I found it challenging to get a range of values in the perfume bottle and it ended up being too monochromatic. Pointillism was a very new and interesting way of working that allowed me to create an interesting dynamic with the shapes and shading. It was quite time consuming but overall I think my attempt at shading the pencil sharpener was successful. Out of the five techniques I tried, I think my least successful were the scribble and the charcoal, as in order to refine my skills at being able to create a range of tones, I would have to practise a lot more and continue to use those techniques. 

The images above are my technique studies. I really like how the apple looks with the use of cross hatching. I think this technique really shows the form of the apple. Having the horizonal lines wrapping around it, informs the structure more. When doing my final piece, this is something that I considered. I think it would be fun to try out this technique on some more natural forms. 

For my final still life, I ended up choosing to draw a bonsai tree, ornate vase and an apple. I choose to use a mixture of cross hatching and hatching for this piece. I used hatching on the man made structures to create more static tones and the cross hatching for natural forms and textures. I think my use of hatching and cross hatching was relatively successful; however, the piece started to look a little bit monochromatic after I was over working the cross hatching. After the feedback, I tried to add some more differentiation between the tones in the plant to the clay plot. I think value range is still something I will have to continue working on especially whilst using shading techniques that I am not used to.