Day One of Art Week: Drawing

For my first two years of college I was focused on getting an art degree. I have always enjoyed art, especially drawing with a simple pencil, and after high school I was certain that I wanted to pursue it as a career. However, a fine art degree, although it is a fun degree to work on, isn’t exactly practical. That is, unless you are what some people like to call “Financially Independent.” So, I switched to a graphic design degree. I was very happy with it for a while, until hours upon hours of trying to get a computer to do what I could do with my hand in seconds began to wear heavily on me. Eventually, I knew it was time to make a change. That’s when I switched to an English degree and I am very happy about that change.

Nevertheless, I still love art and I practice it whenever I can. So, I’m going to share a few pieces with you guys.

I’ve decided that all this week will be “Art Week” and each day I will pick a different method/medium and show you different pieces of my art that fall within that area.

Today’s method is Drawing!

All three of these drawings I did in my Drawing I and II classes. The subjects are boring, but the drawings turned out a lot better than I expected. (Sorry for the bad photography. The lighting in my rooms sucks.)

This is a form of subtractive art. I started by rubbing grated graphite all over the background. This is used as the medium tones in the drawing. Then, to get lighter tones, you erase or subtract the medium from the background, and to get darker tones, you add medium over the top. Everything is done in pencil/graphite. The focus of this piece was glare and reflective surfaces.

This is just a normal pencil drawing. I didn't start with a background, just plain white paper. The focus of this piece was matte surfaces and shadows. About five different lights were pointed at this still life in order to create all the criss-crossed and layered shadows. This is also one of the best pieces I drew in those classes.

This drawing was done using Conte crayon. It's a chalky-waxy kind of pencil that requires an aggressive hand, but allows you a limitless amount of control. I started with a grey sheet of paper and then added to it with black and white Conte crayon. The focus of this piece was metallic surfaces, hence all the tin and aluminum objects.