Still Life Charcoal Composition

For my charcoal drawing, I decided to draw a clock and a jar. I drew a clock to remind myself that time is unstoppable. Therefore, instead of worrying about the things that will eventually come, I should make the best out of the situation I'm in and work towards to solve the moment of time I fear. It also stays as a reminder to me that time is infinite so the hard times will also pass and I'll be okay. My other object was a jar with the lid open and a glass ball next to it. The pearl represented me, while the jar represented my mind. I tend to be so in my head that I worry and think about too many things. Just like the pearl, I wanted to work toward getting outside of my head.

 When I first started working on my detail I was able to get the thick defined lines that were reflected on my objects, but the less defined and small details I didn't know how to show on my paper. All I saw was reflected light so my head was saying to erase parts of the shaded area to make it look like the light is reflected. As you can see from the picture it did look somewhat realistic but a lot of detail was missing.

This was a point of a slump for me. I didn't feel confident about my work and didn't know what to add to make it better. In the end, I actually erased my clock and started again. This time, however, I listened to what Mrs. Harvey said about the importance of shape. I started from one small area like the glass ball attached to the bottom of the clock. Spending more time looking at the object closely  I had a turning point where I started to see shapes. At first when Mrs. Harvey said shapes I didn't understand for all I saw were light reflected and few lines and circles that were visible. However, if you looked very closely you could see thin white lines, layers of circles inside circles of different shade, and various shapes like wavy lines. I was afraid the shapes would make my work look artificial as a reflection to me wasn't shapes, however, when I stepped away I realized that these shapes together were able to help get all the details and tie it together.

Looking from far away also helped me realize how darker or lighter areas needed to be for the shade I saw with my face a few inches away from the paper compared with the distance was different. I also realized that my jar, for example, was uneven at the top and needed to fix it. 

Feedback:

- Use of shapes are good 

- A used good contrast to show the depth and shape

- Detail on corks

- Not gradation

- Shadow is realistic as you can see where the different object's shadows overlap