As I’m majoring in Interactive Game Studies, I’m not currently in any art studio or visual studies courses. In high school, I took AP Drawing and got a 5 on my portfolio, so I received credit for Drawing 1 and an art elective credit. In this post, I will be referencing some of the pieces that I made and earned my Drawing 1 credit for, as that’s the closest thing to the topic proposed that I can talk about.

 

1-1-1

The assignment that I created this piece for was to draw an insect/bug with charcoal. Although we were supposed to only use charcoal, I also used a white gel pen to add some bright white highlights. I really don’t like bugs, so I was really dreading this assignment. I know that they can be very beautiful and have interesting designs, but I just thought they were creepy so I put this off for a while. I ended up finding this fuzzy little bee to draw. I had a lot of fun using the charcoal and gel pen to make its fuzzy torso and had fun creating the very dark shadows that strongly contrast the bright whites.

Self-Critique:

  1. I believe that the strongest aspect of this piece is the contrast of the dark black and bright whites. Very often, things that are drawn in pencil never get to that very dark grey/black and it doesn’t have the full spectrum of value; it’s just shades of grey. This is the first piece I ever did in charcoal and I’m grateful that I did because if it were in pencil, it wouldn’t have this contrast.
  2. The way that the image is placed in the compositional space could have been made more interesting. The object that the bee is perched on isn’t quite coherent/recognizable even though it’s drawn with detail.
  3. I accidentally made the entire body of the bee fuzzy even though the lower half of its body should have been a hard shell. I went with it, and it doesn’t look wrong necessarily, but to make it a more accurate representation of the subject, I would have to fix that as well as flesh out the branch/foliage that the bug is perched on.
  4. There are a few issues with the shading in the bugs middle and back leg that could be improved upon.
  5. This was created on 14 x 17 in paper over the course of 6 days.

 

one-winged-angel

This piece wasn’t produced as a submission for a specific assignment. As I was beginning to work on my concentration for my Drawing course, I began creating this piece, focusing on utilizing line. I used pens with a variety of tip sizes to make very bold and very thin lines as well as crosshatching to create the shadows in the wing. I decided on the hairstyle of the subject to contrast the very long and flowing lines on the right to the very short lines on the left.

Self Critique:

  1. The strongest aspect of this work would be the way that lines were used to create texture in the wing. I had never been able to effectively draw a feathered wing before, so I was very careful and deliberate when using lines for this piece. The crosshatching around the feathers to create shadows also effectively did so without being distracting.
  2. The use of pencil to create shadows in the face and hands might be distracting to the theme and emphasis I was giving to the use of line.
  3. I could have used more crosshatching or lines to create more dark contrasting spaces, and making the element of line more prominent.
  4. The short hair & ear on the left side don’t look quite right. I need more practice with the anatomy of the ear and drawing short hair so I can create it more effectively in my work.
  5. This was created on extremely thick, inflexible, and smooth paper. It is approximately 14 x 25 inches and was created over the course of one month.