Being bored by classical still life compositions, I decided to make a little twist
Besides "classical items", I also decided to use the ones that are dear to me, and never have drawn before, and to try and make a story out of.
THE PROCESS:
The main protagonist of this composition is my barbie doll named Cindy.
I am putting her on a quest of looking for a shoe.
To create the whole story, I am placing Cindy in surroundings which resembles an ancient basement, in which no one has stepped for ages.
The drawing process starts up with a sketch, which helps me to adjust the living scene I am about to draw.
It took more time for me to actually set the scene, then to draw it.
To avoid having to make stuff up, I had to set the scene just right, so all the lines would fall in place, following compositional lines I want them to follow.
In order for everything to fall into place, I had to dissemble the base on which the whole composition was standing, and raise the right side up.
It turned out in my favor, because the crooked floor actually complemented the whole story of being lost from searching. It created dizzy effect, which reminds me of feeling people get after exhausting and never ending search.
I wanted to go for a dramatic lighting, so I decided to draw in a dark, with one intense artificial light source placed on the eye level of the main characters left side.
Placing the light source low creates long shadows of the object upon which the light is cast on. By picking out the intense lightning source, the transitions between dark and light areas are becoming more pronounced and sharp making which makes the scene appear more dramatic.
COMPOSITION:
The whole story is composed around two intersecting diagonals. The place where the two diagonals meet, is the place where the viewer's eyes will be drawn to. So, I'm placing the key element in that position.
The center of this composition is Cindy's plexus.
I look at Cinderella (the lady who lost her shoe, remember?), as an representation of a woman being, so I'm placing Cindy's womb, (the source of creation), and solar plexus (considered to be the center of the personal power), in the center of the whole composition.
By cutting the paper into panoramic dimension, I am reducing the space below the diagonal lines. More space below the diagonals adds to the stability of the whole composition, something I wanted to reduce, in order to complement the whole story.
The placement of the pot, is conveying the message about the outcome of this story. To end in a happy tone, I placed the pot coming down from the upper right corner.
Pot placement is following the baroque diagonal, which the viewers find pleasing and positive and will automatically conclude that probably the shoe is hiding inside.
THE FINAL DRAWING:
Cindy looking for a shoe,
Pencil on paper,
21.5 X 40.5 cm
Check out my other drawings and paintings on or https://www.instagram.com/petrakostanjevac/
Thank you for reading this post!
Have a nice day :)