Drawing With Other Colour Media P.65

Drawing With Other Colour Media  P.65


With this project, I really wanted to try something different. I remember at school, stretching a fabric similar to Muslim Cloth, dripping a hot wax which then cooled and adding various dyes which seeped across the cloth for which the wax acted like a natural barrier, the effect was really interesting So as my Mixed Medium, I have chosen wax crayon with watercolour 

I started by using wax crayons to shade in a bit of tone to my still life sketch. Where there were highlights, I applied white wax crayon (which obviously can not been seen here)

I then treated the Still Life as a regular watercolour and just let the wax do the rest. I knew I had a bit of freedom to load the brush with paint as I knew where some of the white natural barrier would be. I may of gone a little overboard with the background but I had no idea the wax effect would work so well. I think the colour in the fruit has blended really well and if I were to be critical, I would darken parts of the passion fruit slightly that is in shadow and maybe define the the base of the bowl a little more.

Check and Log

How will your experiments with negative space help your observational drawing in the future?

As mentioned before, seeing things from a different perspective would surely help improve accuracy in observational drawing and it could be argued that the mind may sometimes go auto-pilot when drawing familiar images and attempt to fill in the blanks without seeing what is really there. By focusing on the negative space, the artist is focusing on shapes and objects that are less familiar.

What techniques did you use to ensure you drew your plants in proportion?

I would first try to get the stem drawn correctly then very lightly represent each leaf as a bubble shape, making sure it is in the same orientation and position as the leaf. When all bubbles are correctly in position around the stem, I would then start to draw the shapes of the leaves, starting from top to bottom. When working a larger piece, such as A2, like my flower arrangement for example, I would use a ruler to measure the height of the flowers in proportion to the vase and find the half way point.

How did you achieve an effect of three dimensional space in your drawings?

I think this all starts with the direction of light, with that you can plan the direction of the shadow, and as the light hits the objects, tones and highlights are created as the light reflects and curves. With this information, you can add in the shadows, tones, mid tones and highlights to give you a realistic representation of a three dimensional object.