Drawing Lately ......

I confess, there's been not a lot of it. This weekend, I hope to get some in.

The drawing is going well though is at a certain point now where I have had to become sort of decisive about the edges. Namely, how Far do I want to go with the still life outer limits? Where do I want to stop the information being represented? It takes some design not to mention skill to end off in a soft or graded way and have it feel natural. Then there needs to be attention paid to the shape that the outer edges of the drawing end in, if a graded ending off is desired - which I am leaning towards. This would mean that the picture plane of a mat or frame will leave white area around the actual drawing and not just drop into the drawing. In order to accomplish a pleasing finish off it requires slowly and consistently softening the amount of detail rendered as the desired outer ending perimeter of the drawing is reached, leaving tighter more detailed rendering in the main focal area.

I need to now become more aware and precise with this altering of the amount of detail. How the eye sees when looking in one spot, will cause the outer areas of a scene to be less focused as they move away from the spot the eye is looking it. People feel this is a tell tail sign of how to know a drawing was done from life or from a photo (if not considering distortions caused by lens focal lengths, angle camera is held, etc.) So, in a way, that part is a myth. If I look at each object individually as I draw, considering I am sitting only a foot or so away from my still life set up, my whole drawing could also end up in total detailed focus, despite drawing it from life.

However, the reason for me wanting softening focus at the perimeter is Not to make sure "everyone knows I drew it from life", I couldn't care less personally and enjoy working from photo reference and did so all my life, but because I Enjoy that type of presentation in a drawing. I like the unfinished or softly "left off" edge look, even in painting. It can be taken to the point where it allows one to view the artist's initial raw brush or pencil strokes, a peek into the previous layers that were built to bring the work to the finish stage. I like seeing that :-) It works better in painting though.