This is my 2011 art project: I'm going to attempt to do one drawing every day of the year. The drawings can be any medium, any size, any level of care and completion. I'm looking forward to seeing how my work evolves and improves, and whether this practice helps me to be more organized and "together" in the rest of my life pursuits.

Click on any of the sketches to enlarge.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

2/22/11

Green bell pepper

I worked on this a long time - I tried to describe the values with marks, rather than shading. It wouldn't come together until I unified the whole thing with shading, and lifted out the lighter areas with a kneaded eraser. That sort of destroyed the marks. I'll keep trying.
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4 comments:

  1. EmFebruary 22, 2011 at 10:03 PM

    Well, I think it's very good. I need to have you describe what you mean by describing the values with marks, since I think you don't mean stippling. Do you mean something like trying to use areas of value applied in a more painterly way, looking at the local value instead of the whole object, contours, shading and all?

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  2. Amy MannFebruary 23, 2011 at 7:35 AM

    Yeah, I mean leave painterly marks, instead of blending all the marks out. I tried using hatching to get the dark values on this pepper, but it just looked a mess until I "colored" over the whole thing with a unifying value, and went in with the eraser, which also blended out the marks. Usually I shade pretty uniformly, just varying the pressure and pencil to get the right value. I'd like to be more "painterly" with the pencil.

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  3. Helen OFebruary 25, 2011 at 7:00 AM

    When you use the pencil to describe with values, whether with marks or shading, rather than with lines, I think you are being painterly; you are working with tonality, not linearity.

    What you did is a lot like etching; first you do a line bite (scratch lines into the acid-resistant ground and put the plate into the acid to bite through where the lines are drawn). These are the lines or marks.

    Then you open up large areas to bite in the acid, sometimes adding something like sugar to make an uneven bite because the metal under the sugar doesn't start to be bitten until later than the areas between the grains of sugar. These make tones, as does shading with a pencil.

    It is your usual careful observation making the ordinary look so beautiful. A pepper portrait.

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  4. Amy MannFebruary 25, 2011 at 10:53 AM

    Thank you, Helen! I love your description of the etching process. I did a little bit of etching way back in high school, and I enjoyed it very much. I'd like to do it again. Have you done much?

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