Assignment 2

Assignment 2

Own images, Own Photographs (Accessed 05/06/2019)

I have chosen an interior scene and chosen to work in charcoal, pencil and pencil crayon.  

When I was first thinking about this assignment I started to look into mirrors to see the way that interiors look when framed by a mirror.  In the course the painting by Eduard Manet (A Bar at the Folies-Bergere) caught my attention and began this interest in how the mirror shows an interior. This has made me look at interiors in a different way, I found that the views can draw the viewer into the image. I also wanted the image to be interesting so I have brought colour into the image but only for the fairy lights and the background window.

When I started to compose this drawing I looked at the mirrors in my house and the views that they showed, and how the views changed with the light and the direction of the viewer. I realised that I wanted to bring the viewer into the image. When I looked at this mirror and I could see the window on the stairs and the light coming from the window, I realised how light can be used for this purpose of drawing the viewer in.  I found the angles of the stairs interesting too, as well as the light coming through from the window and down the stairs. The idea of looking through a view to another view has always interested me too. By adding the settee in, in the foreground it brings the viewer back into the room.

The mixing of the monochrome with the colours makes the colour seem even more vibrant, but also makes the stairs look darker and gives them atmosphere. The different surfaces in the image are important too and bring interest, the shiny surfaces contrast with the soft furnishings allowing the use of different types of mark making.  The light coming through from the back window gives the opportunity to use tone and contrast in the image.

The angle of the stairs was difficult to capture but by using charcoal I was able to work on this at the beginning in some preliminary sketches and keep changing the angles until it looked accurate. I experimented with the coloured pencils to find the colours that best represented the colourful fairy lights.  The mother of Pearl and mirror around the edge of the mirror proved difficult to achieve as they are so reflective and I did not want to detract from the image inside the mirror.

I haven’t used coloured pencil very much in the past so this was new to me, I found that putting one colour on top of another could change the colour. putting white over pink can make it lighter or using blue with green to make a deeper shade of green.

I knew what I wanted to achieve with this piece, I wanted it to be interesting, I wanted to represent the image well however I have not experimented as much as I would have liked. I think that I did not experiment much because I knew what I wanted and seemed to be getting the image that I had planned.