1. Marks and lines - Contour of simple object

oooooh…... A “Simple” object. …..

Well, in my defence, the task said ordinary household object and, in all honesty, this unicorn mug is probably as ordinary as it gets in my house.

Didn’t make this task easy though, that’s for sure!

I decided to use the iPad as this task is purely focused on line drawing so creating it digitally wouldn’t differ much in overall experience compared to more traditional methods. It also meant I got to try out my new drawing/anti fouling glove that has cats on….swoon. I had never heard of these gloves until recently, but the digital artists I spoke to on the OCA discord server all swore by them, so I figured I’d give one a try….AND CATS, LOOK!

The main focus of this task was to draw the observed space around an object in a single, confident bold line, without moving the pen from the page. Once the outside space was drawn, the next focus was to draw in the shapes created in the negative space.

The first photo shows the original mug. The second photo is a quick representation of the negative space created by the mug.

The negative space is highlighted by the purple striped areas.

The thin purple dashed line indicate the observed outline against these areas of negative space, and that’s what I attempted to draw for this task.

The first two drawings (in black) are my initial attempts at firstly drawing the negative space outline of the unicorn mug, and then drawing the negative space shapes of the handle and mug opening within the original negative space outline.

The task explicitly states to not go back to correct mistakes and to move away from “gestural, almost painterly” mark making and to instead draw a regular unbroken line. I found this technique really difficult as I’m used to being able to sketch and refine my observations before fully committing to them.

This technique forced me to slow down in order to fully observe the negative space before attempting to draw it. The repetition of the shapes meant I began to naturally recall the angles and lengths of the lines, and as a result there was a tendency to draw the shapes from memory. I had to consciously force myself to draw from my observation and not what I “think” is there.

I changed colours I used as I progressed to make it slightly easier to recall the order in which I carried out each sheet [layer]. I also did this so I could easily identify which ones were from which sheet [layer] when I made more than one layer visible for the sake of comparison.

I feel there is a visible progression in the accuracy of my line work as I went from blue, to purple to pink, but I’m not very happy with the overall accuracy of the lines. The proportions seem to be more in keeping with the observed mug by the time I changed to pink, verses my original black line work, although I struggled to accurately depict the internal shapes in relation to each other and in relation to the outside outline. The curves on my line work could do with some improvement. I really struggled to draw those in both confidently and accurately.

I wondered if my initial lack of confidence came from the inability to fully feel the screen under my drawing hand due to the glove, but I tried with and without and it didn’t make much difference. I actually found it harder to draw without the glove as I had begun to get used to the reduced fiction of my hand against the screen protector when attempting to draw curved lines.

Ultimately, I think my lack of accuracy and confidence boiled down to trying to draw these lines with no sketchwork underneath to use for guidance. I drew the outside shape, starting at the top of the handle and working my way around anti-clockwise, and I would become worried and hesitant as to whether I had drawn the lines long enough or at the correct angle, because if I didnt, the unbroken line would not meet accurately at the top of the handle. This would lead to having drawn the legs, nose, horn inaccurately and out of proportion to each other.

By the time I reached the pink layer, I began to draw a more realistic outline of the negative space outside of the mug, with the legs being accurately spaced and in proportion to the mug handle and the unicorn’s muzzle, but the wobbly curved lines of the internal negative spaces sadly reduce the overall quality of the mug’s representation.