UNIT 1 EXERCISE 1: Drawing in Space (everyday object)
Work in-class from Sept 5th: pencil sharpener sketches and initial wire/3D line trials
At home Sept 6 to 10: revise subject, new sketches, work in progress:
Sept 11: sharpener drawings, notes, in process
Will bring to class for Sept 12. My puzzles — is the sharpener’s transparency too confusing? Is the combination of a bare-bones external frame with 2 inner components (barrel and platform) adequate to convey the object? Is the blade intuitive enough, does it need to be more solid, more opaque? Would the pencil benefit from fashioning a dark core (as of graphite)? Do the shavings work?
FINAL Unit 1 Exercise 1: six views
Reflections on the process: back-and-forth between drawing, ideation and production as I tested limits of tie wire. Some angst about whether it would be too confusing to include interior elements in some detail (the barrel, the small platform at end of barrel) with a pretty bare-bones external frame, but I think it worked. Still not sure about the opacity of the blade, might the function/design/purpose have been more evident if it had closer-together lines? Yet, the black wire didn’t really allow that unless I had done a repeat of the technique for the small platform (and I wanted those two elements to look very different from each other. Another option would have been different wire for the blade (armature wire would be perfect, more malleable and even grey in colour!)
ADDITIONAL REFLECTIONS, 2 weeks later… I really enjoyed scaling up the object to 5 or 6 times life-size. It gave me more creative freedom with varied wire shapes — curves for the sharpening barrel, corduroy-road-like dense lines for the flat inner platform of the sharpener, spaced-out parallel lines to imply the hexagon shape of the pencil’s body, tight spirals for the pencil flat end and the screw on the sharpener. I used a very technical, component-by-component approach for this project and the lines felt very defined, very shape-oriented, keyed in on accuracy. I paid attention to the function/purpose of the component — for example, it was important to me that the circular lines describing the barrel’s shape weren’t completely circumferential because in the sharpener itself, one side of the barrel is open to allow the pencil to contact the blade. I also wanted the pencil tip to fit inside the sharpener. Overall… thinking about my lines like they were technically accurate and apt, rather than as gestures or implied.