OCA Foundations Drawing – Drawing from Memory and Drawing ‘Blind’

Look closely at an object for one minute then remove the object from sight and spend 5 minutes drawing the object from memory. (5 mins)

I didn’t find this difficult too tricky, easier than I’d anticipated. The biggest problem I had was not remembering the handle correctly and I hadn’t taken enough notice of light and dark areas.

With your sketchpad under the table draw the object in front of you by using your eyes to trace the surface as though they’re your fingertips. (5 mins)

This exercise was very difficult. Although I thought I was following the lines of the shape with my eyes and following this closely with the pencil under the table I was way off in my first attempt. Trying again, I moved the pencil much more slowly along the same lines as I was slowly moving my eyes around the object.

I have found these first assignments in the course useful in that they have made me look differently at my approach to putting marks on paper and looking in fine detail at objects I’m depicting. It was interesting to make various marks in different depths of pressure and patterns on the same image in an abstract way as this allowed me to look at the variety of what can be achieved with one medium and different media. The observation exercises will definitely help with future still life drawings and portraits as I’ve learned how to look slowly and intently at details and light differences.