Still Life with Guitar. Pencil on Paper. 2017. 24"x18".

Working within the centuries-old tradition of the still life, I set up a group of objects each year which I believe will challenge the young artists with whom I get to work in high school. Using only a drawing pencil, tortillon, and kneaded eraser, the artists in my classes compose their pieces as accurately as they can, adding details and values to make them as realistic as their skills will allow them at the time. We return to still life drawing every year but I do not always have time to draw the still lifes alongside the high school artists. In the Fall of 2017, however, I decided to make time to draw this one.

Building on the observational, compositional, and technical skills that the high school artists have been working on the past few years, I chose to challenge the artists (and myself) by placing a variety of forms and textures together while lighting those forms and textures with a spotlight. The single dominant light source created numerous highlights and dark cast shadows, and several values in between, which added more to the sense of depth within the composition.

For this still life, I included a guitar, with its wonderful combination of curved and straight lines, as the central object in this group; the light source created a long cast shadow of the guitar on the wall. I added four pottery pieces for their reflective surfaces and curved forms. I placed them on towels which I draped in a variety of ways to create even more shadows; and I placed antlers in front of the guitar to add more curves. By including these different items with their curved and straight lines, their values (enhanced by the light source), and their overlapping of one another, I developed a composition which was engaging from many angles and which really challenged the young artists to improve their skills. After working on my own drawing for about 10 or so hours, I would say that I ended up challenging myself as well.