2nd Assignment

I have chosen objects for my 2nd assignment that mean something to me.  The driftwood, fish netting and shells were all collected by my family this year on holiday in North Devon where we went to celebrate my birthday.  I have used the birthday card made by my youngest Granddaughter. I love this piece of driftwood it is such a great shape.  I started to think about composition and what media I would use.  I have chosen coloured pencils as I feel I am getting to grips with them. 

I also played about with colour and made notes of the colours I used.  The practise piece I decided to do in soft pastel on pastelmat as I feel more at home with them. I also chose some flowers from the garden and put them in a glass vase to include into the picture.

I felt after looking at the finished practise piece that there was a lot of space on the right hand side and that it just looked uncomfortable so at the eleventh hour I decided to put the birthday card on the wall and a coffee mug to the right of the netting and I think that it improves the composition.

The main problem I found with this drawing was not to loose any depth particularly on the driftwood in the foreground.  I wanted to maintain the light and the darks and did not want two areas of similar tone to fight against each other.  The netting was tricky as the drawing of the netting was complicated and following the net and the knots was laborious but I wanted to achieve the sense for the netting going towards the background with the piece of drift wood.  I have kept the table foreground simple as so much is going on elsewhere I didn't want to loose anything in being over fussy with it.