Still Life

In our week 2 practical we worked on a still life.  Though I've done digital still lifes this year and little sketches of stuff here and there, I haven't really done an in depth traditional still life since high school so this was an interesting one.

Firstly, I need to get quicker at drawing and rendering.  I spent too long in the sketching stage which, obviously with the time limit of 2 hours, impacted the final result.  This will come with more practice.

Moreover, I also didn't convey the plastic material of the watering can well at all.  I think I should have used smoother, more solid patches of tone in order to convey the sort of translucent (sorry if that's the wrong use of that word) nature of the object.

Lastly, I messed up the tone of the vase.  The shading towards the bottom of it is far too close to the tone of my darkest darks (the hole in the watering can, the inside of the shoe.)  Though I took care to convey the diffuse shadows, they are still much darker in this drawing than they would have been in real life (for instance in the outline of the watering can.)

I do however like how the the drawing turned out proportion wise (although I did make the vase a little smaller) ...  Unfortunately this was not the aim of the exercise.