Still Life Group Using Line P. 57

Still Life Group Using Line P. 57


When preparing for this composition, I knew that I wanted the celery to to be more towards the background with the horizontal lines being broken up by the circular vegetables in front, which in itself would provide form to these circular objects, my biggest question was what to do with the vegetables. I thought the interior pattern of the red onion was too important to pass up and so I chopped it in half, so I could show the curved layers inside the onion as well the straight cut where it had been chopped. When looking for shadow, I decided to chop the pepper, being practically hollow, I knew I could create shadow if I pointed the opening away from light. What the composition needed was more shape and texture so I opted for 3 quite different vegetables with the parsnip, carrot and potato, all different in terms of size, shape and texture.

I wanted to frame the composition so that the viewer would want to look at the subtle vegetables in the middle and I did this by making both the parsnip and pepper quite bold. I used broken line on the parsnip to indicate the curvature of the vegetable, in contrast, I left the surface of the pepper completely blank, indicating a clean untouched surface. Apart from the leaves, I wanted the celery to be quite geometry in form so I tried to use only straight lines. I thought the most delicate and detailed vegetable was the red onion, so I used my Uni Fine 0.1mm for the detail here, the cut section layers being done with the slightest of zig zags. The potato was done with a 6H pencil, I wanted it to not show through that clearly, knowing I would give it a dark shadow makes it almost look like negative space. Whatever the medium I used for each vegetable, I swapped around when doing the shadows, for example, the pepper has a pencil shaded shadow, the Parsnip has Black Biro, the Onion has Black Berol marker etc 

Photo of my composition, for which I was sat slightly to right of while doing this still life.

Overall, I think I made it so each vegetable is distinct enough by the line marks I used and that the piece works quite well, If I was to be critical, I would of moved my drawing a fraction down on the paper as it is slightly top heavy. I was also debating whether to include a horizontal background line so that the piece looks grounded.