I came to this class as a warm-up before I starting a drawing class specifically on landscape painting (though I am also working me way through the rest of the series). My goal was to better clarify my understanding of space and composition, as well as using overlapping to create depth in single subjects.

I chose to share this piece because it was my first foray into collage work - I came to the idea from Brent Eviston’s drawing classes, cutting out practice drawings and using them in collage form. I bought a lemon but exonerated the cross contours and overlaps to give them more depth (I haven’t taken the shading class yet) and tried to create a composition where the lemons seems to be coming towards the viewer in space, towards the light source, with the dark lemon looming out of the back.

Having glued everything down and tacked it to my wall (first time I used a glue-stick in years, which took me right back to my childhood) I still like the composition but I would have used smaller paper fragments to build the background, with fewer hard edges and a softer gradation from light to dark, from left to right and top to bottom, so that the composition seemed to be emerging more seamlessly from the background.

I was also working on this picture of a bat for another project - the original drawing had a number of issues but one of them was space, the subject occupying the center of the page, overlapping itself but otherwise suspended in space without a clear sense of movement or context.
My second rendition (changing from pencil to ink) overlaps the page itself, and much better captures the sense of the bat passing through the picture plane, and out the other side in a burst of frenetic energy.
The example picture was the same, and tried to keep the same subject proportion,s but being more intentional about the use of space really added energy and emotion to the piece.
I appreciate any critique of this pieces, as I use feedback to help decide what classes to take next, and continue my long, looping, art education.