Art 112: Portfolio 3

Our final project in my Maymester drawing course was a still life.  We were to create a composition of objects that reflected our lives.  Ironically the week I worked on this assignment was also my last week of work at Grimball-Cotterill, the design firm I've been working for.  My mixture of feelings about my decision to leave probably influenced my composition.  Moving away from the profession that I have invested so much of myself in....

Plant material was my favorite part of landscape architecture - that is where I found mystery and beauty.  So I arranged plant materials that are withering and in various stages of decay, along with my 'plant bible'.  I think this displays my conflicting feelings of nostalgia, and maybe, the end of something that was once vibrant and beautiful.

Ok, thumbnail sketches, deciding on the composition.

 

In this assignment we were employing all the principles we had been working on: scale, proportion, composition, texture, linework, and now adding perspective.

I used graphite, vine charcoal, and charcoal.  The quietness of the composition and the dramatic lighting speaks to the emotion I was trying to convey.