Vase Illusion, Picasso And Still Life-Drawing From Observation

This week’s assignment includes three different drawings: vases and faces, upside down and still life drawing. It is an interesting process for me to have such kind of brain training in drawing which is so different from the way I used to look at drawing.

In terms of the vases and faces drawing, an interesting thing I found is that I spend much more time on the right side that I chose to draw first than the left side. As some may notice, there are many traces of modifications on the right side, while the line on the left side almost has no traces of changes. When I finished both sides and started comparing the two parts, I found the left side is better than the right one. Here, the difficult part for me is that I tried many times to modify the lines on the right side, but I could hardly find back the feeling I had for drawing the left one, so the two are somewhat not evenly distributed. 

Picasso’s upside-down drawing is a challenging one, on which I spent about one hour, but I think it provides me a new perspective and a new way of thinking on how to organize the drawing process. As it is suggested by the author of the book, it is better not to start with the whole structure, so I intuitively decided to draw from the bottom of the man to his head. I wanted to start with the easier part and then focus on more complicated details. As someone who did not many drawing experiences, I had never drawn things like that complicated. I think two things particularly difficult for me are his crossed hands and how to structure the proportion of all parts. You should have a clear concept of how long each line should be. I chose to draw the hands at the end which made the situation even worse for me. Consequently, there was too much empty left in the middle of the man, and I had to choose between two very long arms and two huge crossed hands, otherwise, I had to start all over again.

As to the materials I chose, I like the feeling when I was using oil markers for smooth, printed paper, whereas I found it extremely difficult to draw on hard printed paper with pencils. I think even for the same object, the material you use matters because it could largely affect the individual creating process and how your drawing could be visually presented. I prefer vibrant and bright colors for the coffee mug, though I am not a master in using colors because I think two different strong colors even conflicting ones could have a visual impact on the audience. The coffee mug on my study desk was the first thing I saw for the assignment. It would be nice for me if I could draw more elaborate and complicated objects, but I think what matters here is I learned how to draw from different angles for one object if I repeated the observing process many times.