Values

In this week's task I had to explore how artists used values in their work to create an atmospheric sense and also how it could show depth, texture and perspective of objects in the scene. For the task, I picked 3 objects in order to make a still life composition and I  focused on the values. I wanted to try to create a sense of perspective within this task using how each object would look in relation to one another. I also paid close attention to how the surfaces and detail of the objects looked. I wish I hadn’t used hatching or cross hatching for this task. I think I would have been able to get a greater variation of value within the piece if I had used blended shading instead. I overworked the piece and the tones ended up too close to each other. After feedback, I ended up knocking back some of the tones on the jug and darkening the tones on the infrared bulb. This object was particularly difficult to evaluate as it was very dark coloured glass. I found it challenging to get a good tone whilst also making it look like glass. This was a downfall of this task and something that I would have to practise beforehand. I also found the metal coffee container challenging to draw. I found it difficult to identify what tones this should be in contrast to my other objects as there was a lot of reflection and colour distortion on the surface. I need to improve when it comes to identifying tones and differentiating them from others. I am happy with the tones I used on the jug in contrast to the very dark sharpie pen; however, I made mistakes on the other two objects when it came to focussing on value.

After receiving some feedback on this piece, I corrected some symmetry issues that the piece had along with some issues with ellipses. These issues are still one of my areas to work on and I am continuing to try to improve on this each week.  Another challenge I had was trying to go straight into this particular piece without doing any thumbnail sketches beforehand. I think this let down the overall value range because I would have been able to grasp a better idea of what the piece would look like before starting it and then I could have changed my methods.