The prompt was to make 50 drawings focusing on a particular topic we wanted to explore further
Food is essential to our human existence — and I wanted to explore the qualities that make it so appealing, tasty, yummy, sugary, or dry, gooey, and unsavory — the texture, flavor, and appearance. I wanted to continue challenging myself by combining light and shadow with line in a way that would convey these qualities. With time, I decided to do ever more ambitious and varied selections of food. I also took food to my room to draw in a different environment and was able to control the lighting and shadows of some of the meals I drew, such as many of the apple and fruit selections. One of the challenges I faced was the limits of charcoal, as drawing essentially in grayscale eliminated color, making some of the food ambiguous. To solve this, I chose less ambiguous appearing food or simplified the amount of food in the plate, leading to easier to recognize drawings. In the end, I was able to apply principles I learned in the course, such as variation in light and shadow, form, and the creation of an experience that would elicit feelings — qualities. This exploration made me learn about the diverse types of food and their often weird characteristics.
Lessons:
- The feelings, emotions, and memories we associate with food
- The texture, properties, form of food
- Combining light and shadow with line to draw experiences — drawings that are funny, soft, fuzzy, tasty, yummy
- Exploring the context within which we eat food and its importance in our eating experience
- The range of possible combinations of food
- The limitations of charcoal also enable other, interesting explorations