Bow Project: Value Drawing

The second project in the series went through many idea changes. First I wanted to do a pile of bows in grosgrain, velvet, and satin. Then I wanted to do a big bow on a Christmas ornament. But at the risk of it being a "Christmas card" which would fall under the cliches we were supposed to avoid, I mounted the bow on a lantern. The bow gives the picture the holiday vibe without coming out and blatantly wishing the viewer a happy holidays.

I enjoy value the most out of all drawing techniques. It's fun to do (especially without a reference; just trying to guess where the light will shine!) and it almost always comes out looking beautiful.

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of the lantern in progress, but it was a challenge to come up with a good design for the lantern itself. I hate hate hate using references, preferring to draw from my imagination, but on this I had a good amount of difficulty and finally looked at pictures of Victorian lighting and architecture for inspiration. Then I was able to take those ideas and settle on a good design for the lantern.

Once I was through with the drawing, though, I didn't like the white space. It gave the light a sense of pointlessness, and a lack of presence. It would be a hassle to color the entire background, and I felt like adding objects for it to shine on to show that light actually was emanating from it would take away from the lantern and bow as a whole. So I mounted the lantern on a piece of black paper and drew the light shining out from the lantern. The piece was done in 8B and 4B pencils, and white pastel.

As before, here is the model bow: