Exercise: Viewpoint

Make a small collection of objects around a theme – choose from: Festival, The morning after, Summertime, Workshop

To be honest, I don’t own a lot of things. And it’s a big problem to create any collection, even small one. I chose a “summertime” theme because i do have sunglasses and few seashells. It’s obviously not enough. I’ve added a towel, made a summer coctail and found a small rope ( just a little smaller compared to what you probably expect)  and tied it with a knot. To complete the picture I took few glass stones for an aquarium. Well, at the end I had my really small, but summery collection.

Using a digital camera move around your set of objects. Look for interesting combinations of shapes and textures, and document them using photographs

Unfortunately, I don’t have a decent camera, so I had to use a smartphone.

Do the same thing with drawing but work in a format that is different from your viewfinder

Choose your favourite design. Using a pencil, draw this design on a larger scale

On my illustration everything seems to be okay, excluding the bloody rope which was supposed to remind about the sea, like on the photo below.

But it doesn’t look half as good on my picture, and doesn’t remind about the sea at all. Probably I shouldn’t tie it into a loop. I decided to solve the issue and re-tie it in other way. Like this.

Well, I kind of like the result after I’ve remade the rope on the picture too.

In your learning log record your thoughts on the following questions:

•  Which viewpoint best fitted the word your objects illustrated? Why was this?

I’ve chosen a viewpoint above the objects because in this way the picture doesn’t look like staged still life. And I think the summertime illustration should look more careless then staged.

•  Which format best illustrated your words?

I think square format would be the best. Well, obviously, I used a towel to place the objects, and they just looked so good from above by chance.

•  Did changing viewpoints make you think differently about your choice of objects and arrangement of them?

Well, of course, viewpoint is quite important. It determines the perception of the image. And it could totally change the look of the image if it would be changed. But in the context of this particular task I’ve tried my best to select the viewpoint so my set of objects correspond the summertime theme by maximum. I changed the viewpoints, but tried not to break the idea of summer feeling. Well, my answer for this question is: with thought-out choice of viewpoint I don’t think differently about my choice of objects.

Categories: exercises, Illustration