Week 9- Still life setup with plaster head

 

This weeks task as to draw a still life set up using the plaster head from last week along with a mixture of other items such as a ball and a wooden box. In this piece i really wanted my composition to stand out and pop against the fabric background as I have found that many of my previous pieces so do so and having the fabric be a very prominent part of this piece I wanted it to look highly contrasting whilst also correcting any mistakes in drawing the head that I made from last weeks tasks. I like the dynamic angle I chose to draw from this week a lot more than last and its given me the opportunity to practise drawing facial features again. Since the head was very light compared to the background I wanted to get the tonal values right and not have it looks to similar,

First I started by sketching out some thumbnails with a grid so that I could relay them onto a final piece whilst still keeping my chosen composition. I made sure to have the objects on different levels in order to create a sense of depth. I also likes how the fabric created a nice even movement to the piece. Having the head offset to one side creates a more interesting piece, rather than if it was to sit in the middle.

After this I used my grid lines to sketch out my composition, this time I made sure to use more construction lines on the face. However I noticed that the mouth was way to high up in relation to the nose and I was able to easily correct it as I caught the mistake early on. The perspective of the face and the distance between the features and how the angle would effect the size and placement of he eye was something I really pushed myself to improve from last week.

I began rendering the face however I should I have start by shading in the darker fabric as this would have given me a sense of what tones I could then move up by, I feel like I ended dup shading the face too dark and then having to knock back some of the shadows with a putty rubber. 

At this point I realised my mistake and then started shading in very dark values to the fabric behind the head keeping in mind the lighting which was reading to the different objects.

Overall I am much happier with this weeks task than I am with last weeks as I learnt from a lot of the mistakes I made from last weeks plaster head constriction and then applied them to the task today. I wish I was a bit more careful with my values however I am happy with the use of my line weight on the ball which is much further forward than the other 2.