Self-directed learning

In this session on the 12th November we were able to go back and review our previous work and pick one of these that we found unsure about or didn't understand as much as the other techniques. I choose to review chalk pastels, as I found it quite hard to mix colours and use this material. When I was thinking of things to draw I thought it would be good to draw a type of fruit as they are very vibrant in colour and I could use the chalk pastels to show this. so I went onto the internet and found some images such as peaches, pears and apples. I chose to draw a peach which had been cut in half so you were able to see the stone inside of it. I thought this would look really effective once I had used to chalk pastels on it.

I also didn't want to draw a pear or apple as I had already drawn these types of fruit in other techniques. At the start of the session I decided to draw the image out first I did this because I thought I would get a more accurate shape and size to my drawing which I did. I also decided to draw it landscape because I felt more comfortable drawing this way and also I thought I would have more room then I would have done if I drew it portrait.

Materials I used during this session were a 2B pencil, chalk pastels and cartridge paper. The technique used throughout this session was scale as I needed to change the size of the peach from the size it was on the paper (A4) to a larger size and scale to fit my paper. I really enjoyed this lesson because we were able to choose what image we had to draw from and also the material we felt we needed more time to practise and work on. By choosing to use chalk pastel in this session and choosing an image I found interesting and that I wanted to draw I was able to progress and get better from the last time using chalk pastels. I'm glad I choose this material to use because now I feel confident and feel like I could draw pretty much anything and use this material next time, which is good because the purpose of this lesson was for me progress.

Areas of my work I think worked well would be the size and shape of the image. I think I did a good job making the image look bigger and making it bigger to fit my page and not just draw it the same size as my printed out image. Also I think I managed to blend the colours together well to make the drawing look quite realistic and similar to the actual printed out image of the peach. 
Areas of my work I think could be improved would by the use of the chalk pastels. The centre of my drawing of the peach has the stone in, I found it hard using my chalk pastels to get the dark colours and the flecks of light throughout it. If I was to try and improve this I would research about this material more to find out what the right way to use this successfully and then either amend my work or re-draw the same image or something else and use my research in this to make this drawing look realistic and like the printed out image I have.

As this is already a development for my green bottle drawing which I used chalk pastels for I am going to do a further development for this material. In the areas of my work I think could have been improved I suggested for me to research this material (chalk pastels) to find out the right way to use them so when I re-draw the peach or another image I can use this to make my drawing look more realistic and this would then show my understanding for this specific material. This could lead me to then progressing further and finding an object at home to try this material on, this would allow me to show my understanding of how to use it effectively.