Picasso – Musical Instruments
I had an image of a composition for a group of musical instruments in my head that I wanted to put down on to paper. I wanted the image to be vibrant, energetic and full of life. I tried to map the image so all the energy would explode out of the bottom left hand and move towards the top right hand corner in a moving spiral. I love the Picasso Musical Instrument image and was aiming for this kind of energy in the drawing. The resulting composition went some of the way but the original rectangle image was too ordered. So, I folded the sides of the paper to crop it down.. This improved the image, but it still isn’t technically good enough. I think the objects look too childish. Only drawing practice will improve this. I tried to map out the negative space in the drawing to contribute to the energy of the overall image – empty space flowing upwards with the objects.
Different versions of the composition below. There are also more trials sketched in my sketch book.
More compositions below
I did find it easier to work with natural objects because they are, by nature, uneven and irregular. For this reason its easy to correct and blend in mistakes. Man-made objects are mostly very uniform and regular in shape and colour – so it is hard to make them look real and any mistake is visible..
I tried to use shading and tone to make the objects look solid. However, with the ukulele composition I did try and imagine a background for the object. This did not work – it looked as if it were floating. The lighting and angles were obviously not based in reality. I cropped the image to cut the corners off and this did help a bit – grounding the shape. I’ve used this cutting off the corners technique a couple of times now and has helped give weight to the objects
Sue's Blog 