Week 3 - Composition

Week three was the continuation of still life but was a main focus on the fundamental principles of composition. The first sketch was a quick ten minute pencil sketch of a still life arrangement that was composed by a small group of students from our group. Firstly the primary focal point of this sketch is the flowers in the centre of the sketch. They draw the viewers eye towards it firstly and then the convexed lines of the two jugs lead the eye away and around the sketch. This has been achieved by adjusting the picture area of this sketch so that the flowers are more centred.

I feel there is an implied line in this sketch that stretches from the left upper corner and touches the top right edge of the first jug, then moves to the edge of the flowers and then to the bottom corner of the big jug. Most of this sketch has interesting rule of thirds except for the upper left hand corner which is blank and white. It seems to be a well balanced arrangement of objects and the proportion of each object is correct. You can clearly see some overlapping of objects in terms of the flowers, jug and object behind it. This has a mostly pleasing composition.

This next one is another quick sketch of another still life arrangement that only lasted fifteen minutes. This sketch is not fully detailed and finished but it does show a lot of the key principles composition in it. This sketch does offer some depth in terms of how the ellipsis are shown in the more rounded objects, also the way the objects are drawn from different angles adds to the third dimension. There a re some very strong lines in this picture especially around the cans and jars. Also there seems to be some implied lines, one almost in the middle stretching across the sketch where the horizontal line of the jar laying sidewards and diagonally across the page from the top left.

The rule of thirds is quite apparent in this sketch and helps the eye move around the sketch by following the lines of each object. It also shows good use of negative space because the spacing between objects helps show just how close they are together in certain parts of the sketch. Proportion is shown correctly and well and also the object are position so that it appears to slightly unbalanced. The composition of this sketch is completely correct because the objects do seem to close together and some appear to kiss but it does give a good amount of overlapping with a for-ground and mid-ground.

The last sketch is the almost the exact same still life set up as seen in the previous sketch but was moved over so slightly, I have focused on more detail and cleaner lines so that the rules of composition can be clearly seen in the sketch. This is took me thirty minutes to draw and shade. There is a definite amount of depth in the sketch, the drapery, shading and positioning of objects all add to the effect of a third dimension. This is a more refined drawing and has very strong and bold lines which lead the eye around each individual still life object.

A strong sense of overlapping can be seen in the sketch with large jar position horizontally across the for-ground and the other objects leading to the mid-ground and drapery as the background. This sketch seems to be fairly well balanced with two jars on one side and the cans on the other, it also had good proportion as you can see how the objects more to the front are larger and those at the back are slightly smaller. This sketch offers contrast because you can see lighter and darker shades if grey which represent where the light and shade is cast. The primary focal point of this sketch is in the middle where the most detail is seen