Graphics Exoploratory Day 1 The drawing exercise

Drawing with our eyes shut 
To the left you can see one of my finished drawing, the task was to stare at someone for thirty seconds and then with our eyes closed draw them from memory. It wasn't just the memory fact that was challenging but having our eyes closed and not knowing where our markings were on the page. I tried to overcome this by creating a plotting guide in my head. I actually really like the finished drawing created with willow charcoal. The design does actually bears resemblance to the girl it was meant to do therefore I was really successful in this task. The only thing I was unhappy with was the pair of two eyes but in its own way it looks really interesting. The drawing is really centred something I find hard doing with my eyes open so this really surprised me. If I was going to develop this more I would play about with applying colour or overlaying another portrait in the same way that this one had been created. This could ad another element to the already unique drawing.


Drawing with my left hand
The next task we were asked to do was draw a portrait of someone with our left hand. This is something I have done before so therefore I had a limited amount of experience. The finished piece is to the right. I am really happy with it, at the beginning I was struggling to make harsh enough strokes but the more I did it the more I was able to create the tone I wanted. I used a graphite pencil to make the marks, maybe If I had chose a darker material such as a marker or something like that it would have been more prominent. However the graphite sticks created an elegant look for the portrait which is really fitting for the person therefore it worked out really well capturing her character. One thing I am not too happy about is the way it is small on the page I wish I could have made the picture a lot bigger to feel the page. Overall I really like this piece and using my left hand is something I am going to consider more of in my work.

Drawing with the pen in my mouth

This was a task I had never done or ever thought of doing so at the beginning it was really hard to gain control of the pen in my mouth however in the same way as my left hand drawing I got used to working in this way. The drawing was as you can see to the right is rather wobbly and even quite square at some points, however I did draw a resemblance to the girl I was meant to and therefore this means I was successful. If I could carry on with this piece I would spend more time making the marks. However as my first time ever doing this I am really pleased and really enjoyed the exercise. I feel I was successful because I drew likeness to the portrait, the medium that I used here was a black felt tipped pen which made the bold marks.

 

 

Continuous line self portrait
To the right you can see a self portrait that I did using a red felt tipped pen a really bold colour. I wanted to make the design stand out so I chose this colour. I have down continuous line a lot but I don't like this picture I did, if I could redo it I would make it a lot more loose and perhaps add more detail in some places. I didn't get to finish the hair however a lot of people gave me positive feedback and said it looked like me a lot. However because I do not like this piece I am going to redo the piece with a longer time frame as well to see how I can improve the technique. I really like the eyes however on the drawing as they are really striking.

Above you can see an ear which we did of the person next to me. The green one was me I created this using felt tipped pens and water, I love the mix of the medium and it worked really well. If you look at the green ear the one I did you can see it is one of the brightest however it gets lost in the other ears because it is really small. I did realise this when I did the drawing to begin with however it was too late for me to redo the ear. Other than this I am really happy with the ear, the exercise let me realise how I could focus on something you don't really think about.

A video showing me carrying out two of the drawing exercises.