Monday, November 2, 2009

concentration: bottles

to start the concentration, i chose a simple "old fashioned" coke bottle. it was drawn with charcoal.

a jam jar was my second focus. the squareness of the bottle made it a bit more difficult to draw than the coke bottle. for the jar, i used soft charcoal and charcoal pencil.

i explored different bottle shapes in the third drawing. it was also a chance to experiment with the way light hits (and goes through) bottles. the handle on the fat jug reminds me a bit of a potions bottle (in reality, they could be potions bottles, although i suspect they were simply old wine bottles).

the labels on this olive oil bottle furthered by studies by permitting me to play with the dimensions inside the bottle and the label that is seen on the other side.

inspired by the excessive consumption of Poland Springs water bottles at St. George's. i re-created a scene seen in any SG dorm room using soft charcoal and white charcoal pencil.

a close-up of the stamp like print on a wine bottle. drawn in charcoal and highlighted with a white pencil.
this is my personal favorite. the crushed bottle was a very quick drawing and was both conceived and completed under what felt like a spell when i could draw anything. however, i also love this drawing because the contrast that the white pencil creates against the midnight black paper. i also absolutely loved using line weight to emphasize certain parts of the bottle.

this is a patchwork of drawings that were pasted together to create one giant bottle top. i liked drawing this piece because of the small details (such as water droplets) that the sharpie allowed me to capture. this drawing was also the first one that i incorporated people into. around the lip of the bottle, a long and skinny man swims.

in this drawing, the people are much more evident. the idea behind this drawing is that people are trapped by the contents of bottles. i wanted to show the desperation and danger of those that depend on substances. i used a "Clorox" bottle to illustrate how brand-obsessed our society has become (often, people have an idea about one brand's product because they have never tried anything else. they seem to think less of the same product made by another brand. in this sense, i explored the danger of consumerism.)

i enjoy this drawing for the controversy it sparked. inside a baby's milk bottle, a small fetus is trapped, drowning in its own milk. this was the first drawing where i created an affiliation between the person and the bottle. the baby, like so many, is fed from a bottle from an early age (rather than breast fed). personally, i think this is dangerous because the baby forms less of a connection with its mother, and more of a connection with a piece of rubber. this drawing emphasizes the importance of family relationships, and once again, the danger of relying on a machine made product to do a humans work.

i love this picture because of the man within the glass. i enjoyed changing the perspective of him, making his hands (which are touching the glass) bigger, and his knees (which are more towards the middle of the glass, away from the edge) much smaller. i also love this drawing because of the detail of the bottom of the glass. the man, in this case, is trapped by an everyday object. it is up to the viewers to decide if he is trapped by the object itself, or what it represents. either way, he is helpless, encaged by a wine glass.

my other favorite of the series. like the crushed bottle, i loved the challenge that using new materials presented (pastels). there are four people in the pouring liquid: one screaming face, one smiling face, one helpless person with a downcast look, and one person drowning (or bathing, you decide) in the bottom of the cup. the idea behind this drawing is pretty straightforward: the dangers of alcoholism. however, the picture speaks to a wider array of people in the sense that it is not only an addiction to alcohol that is risky, it is an addiction to anything that is dangerous. the challenge behind this piece was in blending the colors to resemble the changing colors of liquid as light touches some parts, and leaves others in the dark.

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