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Simple Still Life Using Ceramic Containers
For a warm-up, we will develop muscle memory for sketching ellipses. All round and cylindrical shapes, when viewed from an angle, create some variation of an oval or ellipse. Occasionally a circle is useful. Fortunately most art and drafting suppliers sell templates for these shapes. It is worth purchasing at least one.
The point of the exercise is not to use the template to create the ellipses in our sketches! We will use the template to get the feel of what sketching an ellipse feels like. We will create muscle memory associated with these shapes. Quick Sketch is freehand. There are various exercises that help to do this:
• Practice using the template with an extremely light touch with the intention of barely touching the template while concentrating on the feel of your arm movement in relation to the visual shape being produced. Occasionally reproduce the motion on another sheet of paper without the template.
• Reproduce the template visually by drawing all of the ellipses on a sheet of paper. Make copies of the ‘practice sheet’ and trace the ellipses whenever there is a little time for skill development.
• As the feel of ellipses normalizes, sketch the forms intermediate to the increments of shape and size provided by the templates. Once the feel is achieved, variation is like writing larger or smaller, and fatter or thinner.
• Rotate the exercises at all angles. Vertical and horizontal occur most commonly, but others also show up. Odd angles are helpful in creative composition.
As ellipses begin to seem possible, combine them with other lines produced with the relaxed targeted intention being made automatic with previous warm-ups. We can use the slide show below for developing the circuitry in our nervous system until it feels natural. The viewing duration is not adjustable in the slide show, so we must control timing with the pause button, or have someone else help until the feel of the timing also becomes predictable .
A few extra items are included so that visual models do not become predictable.
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