Drawing Still Life Again

Drawing again tonight. I had to revisit this still life and correct all my previous errors. Not a long session tonight, I want to get back to the site design and get that working well. I’m going to be doing a lot more charcoal drawing though, I love the medium.

So after last nights drawing being so ultimately inaccurate I focused really hard on getting the drawing of the Zen box perfect. I even did a preliminary picture when I was confused about some measurements. As a result I didn’t get much done but I’m really happy with the accuracy of the drawing and I feel like a learned a lot about what I was doing in correct to get such bad measurements.

The Drawing

The Setup

My hierarchy of painting importance

1. Drawing
2. Value
3. Edges
4. Composition
5. Color

Drawing

This was a preliminary comparison of the box. I was measuring this thing multiple times and coming up with sizes that really didn’t make any sense. I would measure then look at where a mark was laid and I could tell just by looking at it that it was way off. So I would measure again and get a bit closer. I did that about 15 times, at least. What I found out was that my drawing was mostly inaccurate due to several changing variables.

1. The closeness of the subject.
2. My torso movement closer or farther away from subject.
3. Not measuring a distance against to other measurements.

I plan to correct these by

1. Always keeping my torso directly over my butt and straight.
2. Dealing with the closeness of the subject here at home.
3. Measuring for a base increment, then using that to measure a distance, then checking that distance with the base increment and something else.
4. Trusting my own judgement over the measurements.

How can I improve the drawing

Well I did everything I said I was going to do and the drawing is superb. Only A couple spots could possibly get closer with more observation but I’m not sure if the camera angel is effecting those areas.

Value

How can I improve the values?

Not much of a focus on value tonight. Although I’m happy with the shadow side of the box.