Exercise 9: An Objective Drawing

This exercise was paired with exercise 10 to show an understanding of objective vs subjective drawing. The Key Steps in Illustration book defines ‘objective’ as ‘not influenced by personal feelings or opinions’. Exercise 9 asked me to take an item from a list and explore it visually, then draw it objectively using a pencil or fine liner. I was aiming for a high degree of visual accuracy and to be technically controlled. The purpose of this drawing was to clearly convey visual information.

Having spent the past few months working on getting out of my head, being more free and subjective, and letting go of the restraints I placed on myself to create ‘perfect’ art, this task was quite daunting. I was nervous about doing it for all the same reasons I have been in the past, and felt like if I couldn’t draw it perfectly I would fail. So I took a step back and assessed what I really needed to get out of this task.

The purpose is to understand objectivity and how to create imagery that is totally impersonal. This is hard, because a lot of the items listed are personal. But the task was simple when reduced to this – draw what you see. No fancy lines or colours, no texture or style, just plain and simple: what is in front of you.

I decided to draw a pair of glasses, specifically because in assignment one I panicked about drawing my own glasses ‘correctly’ and instead traced them. I thought it would be good to learn how to draw them, and how to get a feel for them.

I used a black drawing pencil and some sketchbook paper for this. My experiments in exercise 8 made me realise how much I liked this thinner paper, and I’ve been drawing with the coloured drawing pencils happily for a few weeks now. I began by drawing an outline of the glasses frame and lenses, then slowly starting to shade it. The glasses are tortoiseshell and I tried to show this by shading very dark areas and very light areas in a similar pattern. The red detailing I simply darkened the most, to show it was one bold block of colour. I was quite happy with how I showed the glass on the lenses. I very lightly shaded the entire lens, then smudged it slightly with an eraser. Then I used a thinner, stronger eraser to erase lines to show the glare.

I feel as though my drawing does communicate a pair of glasses objectively. It is however quite sketchy and not as technically controlled. Once finishing, I considered redrawing it using a mechanical pencil then fine liners, as they would be closer to ‘perfect’. However, I am very aware that I keep doubling my workload by attempting to reach perfection. If I have missed the point of this exercise, and I should’ve redrawn it, then I will revisit this task.