{"id":8589,"date":"2014-04-25T12:15:02","date_gmt":"2014-04-25T17:15:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vitruvianstudio.com\/?p=8589"},"modified":"2015-02-02T21:27:12","modified_gmt":"2015-02-03T03:27:12","slug":"still-life-drawing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vitruvianstudio.com\/blog\/still-life-drawing\/","title":{"rendered":"Still Life Drawing?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently completed a new drawing at the studio titled White Pitcher & Nautilus<\/em>. My intention is to develop a collection of drawings to use as supporting material for our upcoming online course Drawing Basics<\/em>. But while working on it I became aware that I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever done a still life image that wasn\u2019t a painting. Why is that? Figure drawings and portrait drawings are commonplace, but \u201cstill life drawing\u201d just doesn\u2019t sound right. It isn\u2019t really a thing.<\/p>\n

But it should be. I found this drawing to be both fun and difficult. It challenged my assumptions about drawing materials, and presented problems I don\u2019t normally encounter while drawing the figure or portraits. The gradient on the white pitcher, for example, was an extremely delicate balancing act. Being a symmetrical, glossy surface with no local variations, I found it far more difficult to organize than the gradients seen organic form, which are somewhat irregular and afford a wider margin of error. On the pitcher, every square centimeter had to be tuned just right or it stood out jarringly as a painfully obvious disruption of the surface. It took a lot of stepping back, squinting and making very<\/em> minor tweaks and adjustments to get it looking just right.<\/p>\n

Similarly, the slate tile offered unique challenges, with its irregular surface requiring unconventional mixtures of chalk and graphite. Normally, I don\u2019t try to mix these materials together as they don\u2019t blend very well. But on the tile itself, there were local scratches, grooves and \u201cdusty\u201d areas that seemed to require a dark foundation of graphite, and then a \u201cfloat\u201d of chalk on top to get the right effect \u2013 not something I normally do.<\/p>\n

So this has been an education for me, and I\u2019ll be looking to do more drawing of different objects and surfaces to see what else I can learn about my drawing process \u2013 something I thought I already knew thoroughly. But, as I\u2019ve said elsewhere, drawing and painting are complicated and we should always expect to discover new things. That\u2019s what keeps it interesting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently completed a new drawing at the studio titled White Pitcher & Nautilus. My intention is to develop a collection of drawings to use…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8591,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-instructor-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitruvianstudio.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitruvianstudio.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitruvianstudio.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitruvianstudio.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitruvianstudio.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vitruvianstudio.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitruvianstudio.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitruvianstudio.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitruvianstudio.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitruvianstudio.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}