AICE AS ART/DESIGN CONTROLLED TEST

Name: Brandon Nguyen

Candidate Number:1720

Exam Level: AS/Art and Design/9704

Component: 02 April 30, 2015

Centre: US015

Section B: Question 11

After reading over the controlled test given to us, I was first attracted to question #3 of Section A, Inside out. Initially, I wanted to approach this idea by creating a double exposure image, but I found it difficult to capture or even locate the appropriate photos for the image I wanted to create. With this being the case, I reverted to question 11 of Section B, in which I have to interpret the whole or any part of the extract from "Cider with Rosie" by Laurie Lee that is given to us. From this, I decided to illustrate the piece, "We lit candles and set them about...one on a plate in the window...".

With a new scheme in mind, I decided to simple sketch what I saw in my head, which lead to the following drawing:

This drawing was very impulsive with very little thought to the image itself; I knew all I had to do was draw a candle on a plate, that was also in a window, and that's what I did. While the sketch gave my a good idea of the image I would produce, I felt I needed to refine it

and draw it on paper that wasn't notebook paper.

Above is the resulting sketch.

This sketch was done on black construction paper while using a white Gellyroll pen, which writes in white. This would be the equivalent of a negative of the previous sketches.

All three sketches were done as that, sketches. I decided to keep it a sketch to keep the unsure tone in the image. In the extract, I felt an unsure tone as I was reading it, because while I felt the narrator knew what s/he was doing, they were unsure of what would come after. It was at this point that I determined that my final product would be a sketch, or gesture drawing, in order to keep the tone of the extract. In addition, I decided that my final product would be in greyscale, to keep the simplicity as I felt it would compliment the vivid imagery of the extract.



Gesture drawings typically never stay as just that, as they are sketches for more refined and perfected drawings and artwork. Gesture drawings are always loose and never precise, and this fact alone caused me concern as I started my project, simply due to the fact that I know "drawing" in Illustrator won't be the same as traditional drawing. Despite that fact, I jumped right into it.

The main compositions of my work will compose of three main parts: the candle, the plate, and the window. With that being said, I did each one separately. Out of my three initial sketches, I felt the first one was best, and so I ran with that one.

First, I brought up the image in Illustrator, as it will serve to guide me.

Then, I locked that layer, and used the brush tool to give me a template for my candle. The brush and eraser tools were probably the only tools I used for about 95% of this image. As the projected progressed, I gravitated toward using line with a point thickness that was usually 0.5 and 0.25. Rarely did I use anything above that, and if I did it was 1pt.

Hiding the original sketch.

My first critique against this was the plate, I felt that the plate was at the wrong angle.

I felt that if the candle and plate were to be viewed from, say across the room, you'd see less of the inner plate and the oval created by the edge of it would be narrower.

I erased the top portion of the plate, but kept the bottom, so I would have a placed to work from.

The blue oval serves as a model for the edge of the plate.

I was much happier with this after correcting that. My next fix was the top of the candle, where it begins to melt. I think the edge needs to be more circular and rounded. A candle is, more or less, and cylinder, and as such should have a more circular top.

My solution for this was the same as before for the plate.

This looks much more natural.

With editing the candle done, I moved onto the plate.

This picture of a plate that I found was very close to the plate that I had visioned in my mind as I read the extract. Therefore, my plate imitates its very closely.

Drawing from my knowledge of art, I know that all things can be made using simple shapes. with that said, I noticed that the plate was mainly two shapes, circles and ovals. So I used two circles and one oval to create a basic representation of the plate. Then roughly "sketched" the plate from memory.

It's very close, but not perfectly aligned, and this was fine with me.

Next, I needed to bring the candle and plate together before continuing.

And of course, they weren't perfect, but that's an easy fix. Although, I did not account for the fact that they would overlap each other, as seen below.

As I said earlier, the eraser tool was used quite extensively.

After taking a step bake and looking over what I have so far, I saw that the balls that acted as legs for the plate and the bottom of the plate were not shaded correctly. So I reworked it.

This is now much better. Simply taking away strokes goes a long way. While it's a very subtle change, it makes the difference in conveying that an image has depth to it.

The last part I needed was the window. For this, I brought back the original image.

I used straight lines to mark the cross of the window before taking away the original sketch. From there i simply went over roughly to create a sketched look for the cross.

Although, for a cross on a window, the placement of it was too low for it to make sense, but bringing it to where it would be properly placed would put it out of view. In the end, I settled on bringing it higher where it's still in the picture and makes a bit more sense.

Now for the window sill, this will be a simple horizon line.

At this point, I reconsidered the passage. Since the narrator is lighting candles about the room, I can safely assume that it's night. As such, I needed to darken the panes of the window. For this I used the following brush.

This brush creates the following effect.

I felt that this was perfect for roughly filling in the space needed. So I did the panes using such a brush.

It turned out exactly as I wanted it to; very rough and very edgy. I considered adding lines to give the cross itself some color, but I decided against it because I felt the solid white breaks up the monotony of black. I think this important as it also makes it stand out.

My last step was to give the ground the plate is sitting on definition, and I used the same brush as before. In addition, I took into account that this is a candle, and as such, will cast light around it, including the ground. with this thought in mind, I developed the following 

All strokes are directed at the center, as that's where the light source is. And while I did like the way the strokes turned out, I wasn't completely satisfied with the color.

Grey was a compromise; while black added too much darkness to the image, grey provided enough tone without over doing it. From here, I toyed with different greys and came to this one to use in the final product.

And from here, I played around some more by attempting to add highlights, because I thought it would make it more interesting.

But in the end, it didn't help it at all, and I trashed the idea.

My final product.