Drawings-11/9/14

1.) Did you learn any new techniques or processes as part of the work for this art project?

- I learned 3 new techniques for the drawings of the Dum-Dum, Jolly Rancher, and peppermint. The first one was in the colored pencil media, which was the drawing of the Dum-Dum. I liked that I learned how to highlight the creases of the wrapper. The value of the color was also very important in order to show a variation in the colors of the wrapper. It was also interesting to learn that in order to make something look cylindrical, you have to highlight the center with white, and then have the sides or corners a much darker shade to show that the object is rounded. However, with this exercise, I mostly focused on getting the details of the wrapper. The second technique I learned was the use of chalk. I never really enjoyed using chalk because of how messy it can get, but I discovered that the most important part about using this media, is how much pressure you put onto the chalk. Even if I had put slightly more pressure on the chalk, the drawing would look unrealistic because of of that one darker color. Something new I learned was that in chalk, you should try avoiding blending the colors. This can cause the drawing to look like a mix of colors without any proper highlights or shades. The peppermint was by far the hardest of them all. The last technique was the oil pastel drawing. When I first started drawing the Jolly Rancher, I couldn't figure out how to smooth out the pastel so it would look fully colored. But once I learned the process of dragging the oil pastel back and forth, which takes a very long time, I saw the color had automatically filled a nice, smooth texture onto the paper. I also liked the fact that the values of one color (for mine it was blue) could be so distinct with adding white to the darker blues. The one thing I would've worked on more though was the shape of the candy, and better use of darks and lights.

 2.) Did you use a source of inspiration and combine it with your own ideas to make it original?

- The sources of inspiration I had were the actual objects: Dum-Dum lollipop, Jolly Rancher, and a peppermint. I used these candies to help me draw the specific creases in the wrapper; however, I played around with the colors in all three of them. For example, the peppermint's original colors were obviously red and white, but I changed the idea to put two contrasting colors together: Red and Green.
For the Dum-Dum, I chose to do more orange on the sides, more red near the creases, and then white as the main color almost. And for the Jolly Rancher, I chose to put a lot more white on the top and bottom where most of the highlight should be. I also added some black in the creases of the yellow part of the wrapper to emphasize the deeper creases.
Having these objects in front of you is very helpful in terms of keeping up with the realistic look of the drawing; and also just to have a basic reference for colors, orientation, details, etc. of the object you're drawing.

3.) How would you analyze your work?

- I would say I need to improve a lot more on how to blend colors correctly, because I definitely feel like although the highlights and shades are there, it still doesn't look very realistic to me. Especially with chalk, the proper technique is very important in order to not have it look messy or too blended. For the Jolly Rancher, I feel I could have less white and more of the darker blue. The shape of the candy also should have been better sketched out. It was also difficult for me to properly color in and around the letters of the wrapper, so I would really work on outlining next time. For the Dum-Dum, I feel that I didn't give a good range of value for the orange. I tried putting the darker red in the crease, and a lighter orange next to it, but maybe adding some yellow and browns could have made it look more varied. I also feel I may have put too much white, probably because I was focused more on the white part of the wrapper and not the actual colors. But overall, I think I did good in drawing the basic object, and trying to include the creases and highlights of the objects. In the future however, I'll focus more on outlining, variation in colors, and better technique with whatever media I'm using.