Project 6 At Home Exercise 1

OK, so I'm doing this one out of order. That's because I'm on holiday and don't have access to most of my drawing stuff. But I didn't want to take a holiday from the course too. And project 6 seemed like one I could do (ironically) in the house I'm staying in for the hols.

Exercise 1:
First job was to go round the house drawing every corner. I used a soft pencil and white paper as I wanted the sketches to be quick and loose.

This first drawing with the jars is relatively strong. The tongue and groove at the back puts it in a frame and gives the objects their correct size. As with all these sketches, there couldbe more variation in tone as I used only one or two kinds of pencil for each.

A corner where the ceiling slopes
You can see the bottom of the banisters and the hall rug
in the background

A corner of the porch with jars
and a collection of plastic bags.

This sloping ceiling worked well for me, but there's something not quite right about the angles of the tongue and groove.

The washing machine, and rather disconcertingly
my mother's head looking detached from her body!
Well overdue some help drawing faces!

I'm not even sure which way up this one goes.
I think that's mainly because I went all wrong
with the perspective.

There's something interesting in the contrast between the machine's shapes and the shapes of the dirty laundry, but this isn't the set up to explore this.

Under a kitchen cabinet. The cabinet door worked well
The rest doesn't have much to show what's there.

A rather boring corner.
The angles are better on this one, though

A chair in front of a pile of laundry.
These views seem to work best when there's something soft
as well as the straight lines. I think the shadows on the
chair back work well. I was thinking about tone for this one.

This is a different angle on the same view as above, without the person in the way. It does go well when there is something soft and some straight lines. I was using a much softer pencil for the darker parts of this one and that helped to define the shapes better.

Compared to the lamp by the window below, for example. The shadows on the right of the lamp are so indistinct as to show no form, so needed to be darker, I think.

A fancy radio and a hat hung on the back door
This one has more interesting things to look at that some.
The back door isn't quite at the right angle.

A lamp in a corner by a window.

The sketch below is of a rather daunting part of the entrance hall with lots of angles and unexpected architectural features. Again I didn't pay attention to the tone at all and the result is a flat sketch. I wanted to have another try at this one as there were lots of interesting bits to it, and it has a comfortableness to it which it would be good if I could capture it.

This was my first attempt at this complicated part of the
entrance hall.

This is the second attempt, with  a bit more tone, which gives it much more atmosphere. 

This one made me think this corner would be a good one to try for the next exercise.

I did some other sketches of the house, some of them before I really read the instructions properly, so I'm including them, but not as part of this exercise...

As a textiles person I wanted to try to capture the attractive folds of the home-made blinds. I wasn't entirely successful, and the whole drawing doesn't have enough tonal variation.

The bottom of the stairs was a bit of a nightmare because of the perspective on the not entirely even stairs. I rubbed them out a few times. Also it's just a line drawing. I'm quite pleased that I got as close as I did, though!

The yellow leather chair using sharpies.
The sun was reflecting off the leather and making it bright white in places,
which showed up the wrinkles where someone had sat on it.
The proportions of the chair went wrong so the arms are way too short, but otherwise,
I'm quite pleased with the way this one went with the different textures and tones.

 This corner was easier and more satisfying to draw. I particularly like the way the things on t he desk have different textures. You can see that I did it softly first then filled in some more of the depth of tone. The background I left pale and it gives an idea of the depth of the alcove, and that the desk is the focus.

I didn't think that this view would be so interesting if I did it again from different angles, although it was a close-run second to the hall stand view I chose in the end.

This one was not done as part of the exercise at all, but inspired by those sketches I did this
one of my daughter playing on the Nintendo, in pastels to try to capture the colours I could see.
I put some details in with a pencil, on the hand and the pattern of the pink quilt, but didn't want to overdo it after the detailed lines of the previous drawings.
I like the way pastels work when you use them loosely. I think it worked pretty well,
and reminds me of what it was like to be there peacefully in the room together.