At Home Exercise 2 composition - an interior

The task was to pick a view in the house and try out several slightly different views, using mainly tone.

I picked the complex view of the entrance hall with pillars and interesting wooden floor.

The view I started with was from the stairs, looking down, so that the walls made a W shape in the picture.

This is the first sketch. There was light coming from the window in the door to the right, and from behind the pillar. I had to do a lot of rubbing out and ended up with the light areas being in all the wrong places.

I didn't quite believe that the walls leaned out as much as they did and I felt the need to draw in the corner although in real life it was only visible by the change in tone from one wall to the other.

Looking at this again it's amazing how I disregarded the much deeper tone of the floor. I didn't concentrate so much on the tone for this one and it shows in the whole thing looking a bit bare and flat. There's something 1950s about it too, which isn't really how it feels to be there. What do I mean? Something about it being constructed rather than felt. No atmosphere. (Nothing against 1950s styles just the way I think of this in my head).

This one's from below, me practically lying on the floor. A bit of a difficult position to draw from. It ended up being mostly about the objects rather than the architecture. I don't know if that's wrong, exactly, but it seemed to me that it would be more useful from the point of view of learning to draw, for me to do one with more angles and light variations to it.

It is a nice composition though, with the focus on the objects but lots of interest elsewhere too, and the unusual perspective makes it more interesting.

This is my next attempt to draw the view from the stairs. I took a slightly different angle on it to reduce the detail behind the pillar, and I tried with a landscape piece of paper to see the effect. I agree that its more intimate this way, which is suitable for the feeling of this hall, without losing the interesting shapes. I got the variety of tone a bit better in this one, but there's much more tone detail needed on the pillar etc. And I had to rub out some smudges on the window in the door on the right, which was not very effective.

Finally, I tried a more straight-on view, which meant that I couldn't get as much distance from it, and therefore ended up with a smaller area in the picture again.



Of these four sketches, I picked the first one to repeat for the tonal study, but using the paper in landscape to emphasise the W and focus a bit more on the lovely dark wood floor.

Project 6 At Home Exercise 1

OK, so I'm doing this one out of order. That's because I'm on holiday and don't have access to most of my drawing stuff. But I didn't want to take a holiday from the course too. And project 6 seemed like one I could do (ironically) in the house I'm staying in for the hols.

Exercise 1:
First job was to go round the house drawing every corner. I used a soft pencil and white paper as I wanted the sketches to be quick and loose.

This first drawing with the jars is relatively strong. The tongue and groove at the back puts it in a frame and gives the objects their correct size. As with all these sketches, there couldbe more variation in tone as I used only one or two kinds of pencil for each.

A corner where the ceiling slopes
You can see the bottom of the banisters and the hall rug
in the background

A corner of the porch with jars
and a collection of plastic bags.

This sloping ceiling worked well for me, but there's something not quite right about the angles of the tongue and groove.

The washing machine, and rather disconcertingly
my mother's head looking detached from her body!
Well overdue some help drawing faces!

I'm not even sure which way up this one goes.
I think that's mainly because I went all wrong
with the perspective.

There's something interesting in the contrast between the machine's shapes and the shapes of the dirty laundry, but this isn't the set up to explore this.

Under a kitchen cabinet. The cabinet door worked well
The rest doesn't have much to show what's there.

A rather boring corner.
The angles are better on this one, though

A chair in front of a pile of laundry.
These views seem to work best when there's something soft
as well as the straight lines. I think the shadows on the
chair back work well. I was thinking about tone for this one.

This is a different angle on the same view as above, without the person in the way. It does go well when there is something soft and some straight lines. I was using a much softer pencil for the darker parts of this one and that helped to define the shapes better.

Compared to the lamp by the window below, for example. The shadows on the right of the lamp are so indistinct as to show no form, so needed to be darker, I think.

A fancy radio and a hat hung on the back door
This one has more interesting things to look at that some.
The back door isn't quite at the right angle.

A lamp in a corner by a window.

The sketch below is of a rather daunting part of the entrance hall with lots of angles and unexpected architectural features. Again I didn't pay attention to the tone at all and the result is a flat sketch. I wanted to have another try at this one as there were lots of interesting bits to it, and it has a comfortableness to it which it would be good if I could capture it.

This was my first attempt at this complicated part of the
entrance hall.

This is the second attempt, with  a bit more tone, which gives it much more atmosphere. 

This one made me think this corner would be a good one to try for the next exercise.

I did some other sketches of the house, some of them before I really read the instructions properly, so I'm including them, but not as part of this exercise...

As a textiles person I wanted to try to capture the attractive folds of the home-made blinds. I wasn't entirely successful, and the whole drawing doesn't have enough tonal variation.

The bottom of the stairs was a bit of a nightmare because of the perspective on the not entirely even stairs. I rubbed them out a few times. Also it's just a line drawing. I'm quite pleased that I got as close as I did, though!

The yellow leather chair using sharpies.
The sun was reflecting off the leather and making it bright white in places,
which showed up the wrinkles where someone had sat on it.
The proportions of the chair went wrong so the arms are way too short, but otherwise,
I'm quite pleased with the way this one went with the different textures and tones.

 This corner was easier and more satisfying to draw. I particularly like the way the things on t he desk have different textures. You can see that I did it softly first then filled in some more of the depth of tone. The background I left pale and it gives an idea of the depth of the alcove, and that the desk is the focus.

I didn't think that this view would be so interesting if I did it again from different angles, although it was a close-run second to the hall stand view I chose in the end.

This one was not done as part of the exercise at all, but inspired by those sketches I did this
one of my daughter playing on the Nintendo, in pastels to try to capture the colours I could see.
I put some details in with a pencil, on the hand and the pattern of the pink quilt, but didn't want to overdo it after the detailed lines of the previous drawings.
I like the way pastels work when you use them loosely. I think it worked pretty well,
and reminds me of what it was like to be there peacefully in the room together.