Learning to See: Final Blog Post

In this project, I focused a lot on my ability to use line quality to express a subject, and using different thicknesses of lines in order to create a drawing that accurately expressed what I was looking at. I began by observing a tree outside, and looking at the texture of its bark, and how it was composed of a lot of lines of very different qualities and values, and how they came together in sort of swirls and uniquely different shapes. I developed this craft by drawing the tree several times, and each time I used a different way of expressing the lines on the bark of the tree trunk. In my first drawing, I used a lot of thin lines really close together. In my second, I tried spacing out the areas of detail in the trunk, in order to try to portray the curves and depth of the tree, and all of the knobs on the wood. Then in my third (and final) drawing, I used a variety of different lines that were both thin and thick, and incorporated the knobs into the lines as well. For my first drawing, I used pencil, and for my second two I used a paintbrush with ink. I really liked working with the ink and paintbrush for my drawings, because it allowed me to easily make different line thicknesses, and express the lines the way that I wanted to. I think that I was able to combine my own sense of expression into my representation of shapes pretty well in my third drawing, because for some of the tree trunk area I sort of improvised the curves in the bark, and I was able to add my own lines into the tree. I think that through this project, one of my strengths as a representational artist has been observing the different depths of a subject, and manipulating the quality/value of a line in order to accurately portray them in my drawings.