Exercise: A Rose By Any Other Name

Brief

Choose a houseplant, a cutting from the garden or a bunch of flowers. 

Focus on a small area and draw what you see. Be as accurate in describing shape, form and details as you can. Aim to create a drawing from which somebody else could recognise your plant.

Now, draw the plant again, this time from a much more creative perspective. Describe the plant but in simpler and bolder terms. You might want to play down your use of colour, line and form, for example. Your drawing should try to summarise the essence of the plant, so it becomes more universally recognisable rather than a specific specimen.

The Exercise:

I am not saying this plant/flower till the end just to see if you can get it from what I've observed and created.

Drawing what I see

Starting off, I used willow charcoal to create the observational drawing, after that I used a dip ink pen to do another observational illustration-- without a pencil sketch.

Pushing it further!

I wanted vibrancy in the creative part of this exercise, and something I haven't used to a while is oil pastels; I created several pieces that vary from colour, line and form focus.

Evaluation

I have loved this exercise, thoroughly, maybe it was exploring different techniques or it was drawing something as beautiful as freesias. I loved letting loose on drawing and I feel like it's given me a bit more confidence in my drawing abilities.

The charcoals are by far the favourite of this exercise, I really like how they turned out and with the little mark-making and hits of smudging it's given a nice illusion to detail. I tried to focus on the small part of the plant and ended up doing various different parts of it just to make sure I did the exercise right.

For fun and with the influence of George Washington Carver, I used a drip ink pen to create a little sketch of the freesia and it turned out okay, I could see myself using this in the future (same with charcoal).

Moving onto the create section of this exercise, I explored oil pastels since it's something that is really hard to achieve details with-- so I wont be tempted to add them. Plus, with the oil pastel you can create really vibrant colours.

The first piece of work is all about colour, trying to capture the colour and light was a little difficult but I really like the outcome of this, the overlapping colours crate a nice flow and somewhat match the real reference. I like the thick oil pastel of white on the flower and flower buds, it gives a nice illusion of light with the darker greens showing the undeveloped flower buds.

The second illustration is meant to be a mix between shape and colour focus, however the flower gets lost into background, it's nice and loose though and appears to me as more on the abstract side. I still really like the thick application of oil pastels, I tried to make this piece light and bright just like the essence of the flower itself.

This piece solely focused on the line of the flowers and done a different perspective from the other two, I tried to be quick with this one so that I wouldn't over-work it and focus on the intend role of this piece. I could see this being used for something-- though I'm not too sure it looks like a freesia because of the angle it is in.

The piece looks a messy and doesn't capture the essence of the flower being soft, fragile but neat which slightly bothers me.

This piece, I loved, concentrating on the shape creates a bold graphic and you can see what flower it is because of the bold shape. With the light colour, I feel like that captures the lightness and warmth of that essence that I really wanted to achieve in the previous one. Because of the thick oil pastels, it creates a nice texture and left some of the paper through which acts like the light hitting the flower.

The first and last piece are my favourite of this creative part of the exercise, while the charcoal is my most favourite part of this entire process. I'm glad that I played with materials for this exercise, it reminded me what other options I have to create illustrations/sketches; this exercise is good preparation of the assignment.

Further Reflecting (Working on tutor feedback)

I very much like the looseness of charcoal and I feel more inclined to use it again for figure drawing, and maybe even using oil pastels again as it creates a nice silhouetted shape, that way I can learn shape language of people and grasp a better understanding of anatomy.

Attending a life drawing class, I used the loose charcoal to create gestural drawings. It was really fun to be loose and actual successfully capture the proportions and anatomy closely, I could really play with charcoal and create expressive line work.