Still Life

Still life drawing is where all of the techniques from gesture drawing and contour drawing come together to make a finished work of art.  Still life is drawing from observation except the subject is typically of inanimate objects, such as vases, cloths, clothing, food, etc.  The goal of this style of drawing is to render the subject as realistically as possible, focusing on light and shadow and proportions.

In Practice

In our class we did this same exercise.  However, due to lighting constraints we had to improvise a little.

We started by drawing the outline of our subject with graphite pencils onto inexpensive paper.  Not focusing on detail at this point, the goal was to draw the outline and then trace what we have drawn onto a smaller piece of drawing paper.  Once the outline was drawn it was then drawn over again with a darker utensil, such as a darker pencil or pen.  This was done so that the tracing process would be more efficient.

After tracing onto the drawing paper, flashlights were placed strategically on each of our subjects so that we would each have quality lighting.  A picture was taken of each of our subjects and we were to draw the light and shadow over our lines based on our photographs.

Issues to work on

In the time that we had I didn't complete much of the shading process.  I wasn't focusing on keeping things loose and quick like the techniques learned in the gesture drawings.  Had I paid more attention to using those techniques, I would have gotten much farther with the drawing.  I learned that by being quick and loose you can complete the entirety of the drawing and then go back in and touch up the details and finish the work much faster.

In giving this exercise to students I will have to stress the same issues that I had.  I would encourage them to be loose and quick with the outlining, then go over that with the darker utensil but use that to draw the finished line and omit the inaccurate marks.  The students will be expected to be loose so that they can focus on accuracy later, but it will be stressed that they should not be too loose as this drawing is not timed and speed is not as much of an issue.  They will be expected to use what they learned from the pastel gesture exercise when shading their drawing and keep things simple, then later add more detail and accuracy.

Other Student Examples: