Naomi's Blog

In our second unit in art, we learned and experimented various line techniques and how we can use them to show the shape, texture and tone of objects. I looked at art works from Vincent Van Gogh and Albrecht Dürer. Our unit question was, ‘How can we communicate visually?’ Our significant concept was, ‘Line can be used to convey shape, texture and tone.’ In the background of my final drawing I drew the sky. In the middle ground I drew mountains, houses and rice fields. In the foreground I drew grass, road and a person.

At the start of the unit, I knew a few techniques like stipple and scumble and showing texture and tone from the previous unit on visual journal. We got a sheet of paper that had writing like, “Lines like ocean waves.” We drew all of them and I realized that I can draw different kinds of objects using lines. When we learned the line techniques, I had some ideas of the line techniques I would ise to draw for my final project. On week 3, I drew a barm and critiqued it myself. The barn was out of proportion, the grass looked all the same and the clouds looked weird. In my final drawing, I was able to vary the lengths of the grass but I decided not to draw the clouds. I never drew drawings on a large piece of paper and honestly was worried if I would be able to fill the whole page but I was able to do it measuring the sizes and I enjoyed drawing it. I decided to put the person on the side because it looks better there because of the rule of thirds.

I think I need to improve on contrasting the grounds. In my final drawing, the foreground and the middle ground were hard to tell and when I tried thickening the boarder, it didn’t match the foreground. I think I need to draw the foreground or the middle ground thinking about what it will look like overall. I also need to improve on drawing the grass. I ended up drawing a lot of grass when I tried to make it simple which led to the whole drawing a little to complicated. Also, it took me a while to get use to drawing the grass so some bits look more like lines. I also think I need to improve on time-management and planning. After I was done the sky, I wasn’t sure what to do next. I did the middle ground first but cut the foreground while doing that and I just went back and forth. I think I need to plan what I am going to do in how much time. I spent a lot of time doing the mountains and the person and kind of rushed through the grass at the end. I first did my grass near the path but as time past, I ran out of time and that made me rush. To improve on this, as I said, I think I need to plan what I am going to do in how much time.

Effective strategies I used to was to research various line techniques and practice them. This was work mostly done in the first few weeks of the unit. The slide show on the line techniques helped me learn different line techniques and the sheet on to experiment the line techniques on geometric shapes helped me find techniques I can draw better. Another effective strategy I used is too look at other artists drawings and see how the line techniques are used. When I first started this project, I wasn’t thinking of looking at other artists drawings. I was more into learning the different line techniques but when we first looked at Van Gogh’s line drawings, I learned what line techniques he uses for his trees, grass, etc. Also, I saw how the line techniques conveys shape, texture and tone. In one of his drawing, the trees are drawn with swirly lines. It’s not realistic but it shows the shape and I can imagine a tree like that in my head. When I looked at Albrecht Dürer’s line drawings, it was clearly different from Van Gogh’s line drawings. I learned to convey tone using line techniques from his drawings. It was realistic and very detailed but looking at two different artists drawing helped me too learn different types of line drawings and how the line techniques are used in different ways. In conclusion, I think that in this unit, we learned a lot of different line techniques and how we can convey shape, texture and tone with it. I personally enjoyed this unit and I think that how I can use the line techniques and the line techniques in general, would help me in art in the future.

Here is a picture of my final drawing: