Measurement

Today we did some drawing exercises based upon the techniques of measurement. We had to try, master, and demonstrate these techniques through sketches of this large installation below.

The way in which we sketched this installation was by sticking the A3 white paper onto a board then standing it on an easel that was tilted slightly so we could see the installation better. I liked this technique as it allowed me to compare and contrast my sketches easily and it didn't take as long to look at the subject and draw unlike say drawing on a table. However getting used to the angle of the board was a bit of a nuisance but otherwise i think I would like to use this technique in the future.

The first technique that we learn't about was the grid method which involves comparing the placement of objects with your pencil or brush and creating a grid based upon your observations to help to accurately position different subjects within your image with not much fuss. I found this technique to be quite helpful especially in my second sketch because it was quite hard to place objects in their spaces before. However, the technique depends upon your perception which can be inaccurate, which was a problem in my second sketch because I kept having to change the positions of objects in my sketches to try to get them to be more accurate which took quite a lot of my time.

The second technique we learned about was the sight size technique which allows you to make you sketches more accurate in scale by using your thumb or pencil to measure objects to compare to other objects to get a real sense of scale within your image. This was quite useful for me in my first sketch because it allowed me to get a quick sense of scale of the tyres which were all a similar size allowing me to shorten my time spent on trying to accurately draw each individual tyre. However, if a subject cannot be compared in size to another object it can really throw you off like in my first image where I messed up on trying to represent an odd shape that didn't match up to the scale I created and thus the rest of the sketch looked wrong because I could no longer draw it to scale.

Overall, despite some setbacks, I believe that the techniques I've learned helped me to sketch much more accurately and improved on my overall quality of sketching. I will be using these techniques in the future to further improve my sketching and drawing abilities.