Ways of Seeing

 Ways of Seeing

Over this last week we have been looking the world of art and how we interact with it. After watching a series by James Bridles on how technologies are changing our visual culture, we were asked to dwell on the things he spoke about. His views and ideas about art and how it relates to our modern world was very interesting. I found the episode on how art is use in publicity very interesting and  found it very depressing. The idea that companies use all these schemes and tricks to play the mind of the masses into buying a product that won’t really benefit them. Moving on from the series we were asked to draw a still life set up from 6 different angles so we could make it into a cube. Our set up consisted of a penknife, a model of some cupped hands and an old camera. The penknife and the camera were relatively easy to draw but the hands posed a bit of a challenge. I was very happy in the end although some of the drawings were a bit inaccurate in their details. I mainly stuck to very monochromatic mediums such as charcoal, biro, pencil and felt pens. However, in the last one I dried using coloured pencils which was a bit limited because the only coloured thing in the drawing was the blue penknife. Below is the process of the drawings.

After I had completed all of the sides it was time to form the box. All the sides were made from cardboard which was going to give the box its rigidity. I had to make sure that all the sides were in the right place before cable tying it together. Below is the final thing once its been put together.

With the project finally completed, it was nice to see the cube formed. This took a very long time because I was way to detailed and particular about the drawings. I used Biro a lot also which takes a long time to draw with due to its fine point. However, I am fairly happy with the  overall piece and I think each of the drawings nicely compliments each other. This is partly because they are all matching styles so it maintains a uniformity however, the variety of textures and finishes created by using different mediums adds enough individuality to each drawing to keep them interesting in themselves.

If I was to do this project again then I would try and use some different mediums. Watercolour and Biro is a style which has interested me for a while now and I would like to try this. This project could have been a good opportunity to attempt this but I didn’t for some reason.  I was rather surprised by my ability to accurately draw from life without any help from tools such as light boxes and tracing paper. Usually if I want to draw something complex like this then I would take a picture of it, print it out and trace it. This is partly because I have never really been any good at accurately drawing from life but apparently this isn’t so much the case anymore. However, some of the coordination of the objects could have been better in relation to each other and there are various lines which don’t make sense in terms of perspective of the structures.