Drawing 1; Part 2 – Intimacy; Project 4 – At Home; Exercise 2 – Composition – an interior

I tried playing about with different angles (to the side, straight on) and different viewpoints (sitting on the floor, sitting on a chair, standing) in small sketches using a 9B pencil. They all had their merits – I liked the diagonal lines of sketch 2, but was intrigued by the slightly more cropped and manageable face-on composition in sketch 3; sketch 1 I had almost dismissed as soon as I sat down to draw it, but I can see that the foreshortening of the chair would have been a good test.

Then, oddly enough, while I was deciding where to do my fourth sketch from, I realised that, in each of the preceding sketches, I had drawn the whole picture and then added the lamp in, almost as an after-thought, to literally round each picture off. Of course, half the time I hadn’t left a space for the lamp so was drawing it over what was already there, thinking that when I did the proper drawing, I would need to have a better look at the lamp.

Inspiration struck then when I actually took the time to look at the lamp, and I realised I could get the whole view in one fell swoop in the lamp’s reflection. The downside was having to include the artist (who was wearing her most unattractive and slouchy, but comfy, art gear) – but no gain without pain. I had a go at it, and have decided to throw all my reasons for choosing this corner slightly out of the window – now there are no straight lines at all because of the curvature of the surface of the lamp, and the different textures will not be quite so much of a challenge as hardly any of the chair is clearly visible (although I’ll still have to get to grips with the fabric of the curtains). I really liked the overall effect, so have decided to work up this sketch into the final drawing. I didn’t really feel that decisions about portrait or landscape came into this as I think that the important thing is that the lamp head just completely fills the page – so will probably go landscape as I think the lamp is slightly wider than it is tall. I experimented a bit with cropping in the sketch, and I might shave a little of that bottom left-hand corner off as the reflection is quite blurred there so it’s hard to know what you are actually drawing. However, I want to keep it really clear what the overall object is, so I think I won’t crop the top as this is the bit that makes it obvious that it’s a lamp.