Classroom: Cylinders

Tuesday night's class dealt with cylinders and the shadow structure. For this topic, I chose a simple paper-towel roll. It's wasn't near as easy as I thought that it was going to be. The main issue is that I laid down too much paint, so that I couldn't get a nice white coloring.

In the examples, above, we did did three basic paintings of the same scene. Each was timed to be done in 20 minutes. It's amazing how fast 20 minutes goes when you are concentrating. The benefit of doing the same scene multiple times is that you get better each time because you have the basic knowledge of the previous attempt to help you.

(A) was my first attempt. In this case, it was a matter of getting the shape correct and the basic color scheme correct. The critique that Karen offered was two-fold: 1) The value of the bright part of the paper-towel is significantly darker than the background, 2) The value of the background was closer to the value of the table, and 3) The value of the dark area in the folded over-paper towel roll is close to the value of the background.

(B) was the second attempt. In this case, I got the values closer together (for the background and table). The drawing was also more accurate. The critique, in this case was: 1) The table should be greyer/closer to the value of the background as the table goes back into the distance, 2) The highlight of the paper towel should be brighter, and 3) The base of the paper towel should contain some basic color of the table and the top of the paper towel should contain some base color of the background.

(C) was the final attempt. The drawing got better and the reflection was better. You see more of the table/background color in the paper towel. The major critique was that the edge where the shadow meets the light should be more feathered and softer. They should blend into each other better.

So, more practice with cylinders, this week, for homework.