Thursday November 18^th

Today in class we went over the shell assignment and discovered ways to use ink through experimentation on hot press watercolor paper. The main website we are looking to for this assignment is:

Jane Rosen Teaching

Where there are many great examples of shell contour drawings that are drawn over with ink washes to convey the depth of surface in the shells. I left my shell at home so I worked from a vertebrae in the classroom and struggled to put the form on the page. There are some similarities between the vertebrae and my shell but there are also more complexities in the vertebra that made me wish I had remembered to bring my shell to class.

We first worked for half an hour to about forty five minutes to get a general contour drawing of the object laid out on the paper. Then there were a series of areas closer to the eye that had to be lightly erased on the page to convey their higher points capturing light in space and the opposite had to be done to darken the crevices as well. As we moved on there are multiple ways to lay down light ink washes with larger brushes and work to darker depths and smaller brushes in the crevices of the shell.

Here is a photo of my shell drawing experimentation with ink.

The goals for this third view cross contour drawing are to have more exaggeration with light and dark cross contour lines. The way we are working with dark and light is reverse that from how we were working previously with the light areas being the highest and closest. I am looking forward to further experimentation and getting started on the third shell drawing in ink.