When we did observational drawings of the still life, I used a variety of drawing techniques to capture the shapes. First I used white pen on black paper, in 10 minutes this was the outcome, I just stated off by drawing everything in front of me, just capturing the main lines, without much detail, just as a warm up. Next, I moved closer and looked at a small section of the still life, and spent 10 minutes focusing on light and dark, and adding more detail. I used a variety of pencils to try and add more depth to the piece also. I found by using the brown paper it made it easier to add shadows as it looks less harsh than it would have looked on white paper. The next piece I did was in biro, on very thin white paper. I spent 10 minutes using continuous lines. I found this quite relaxing to do, as it was more abstract in the approach, as I could just squint my eyes and scribble with the pen, I was able to create both light and dark tones, which were able to blend quite easily
When looking back at the experiments I did influenced by Ed Moses, I wanted to refine these as I felt they could have been done in a better way. Some of the pieces I did look rather forced and I wanted to re-visit them. I began by evaluating the types of paint I used for certain pieces. For the strongest pieces, I used a cheaper acrylic, which dried matt and was less pigmented, and for the other ones, I used a glossier acrylic with more pigment. This meant it was harder for the brush strokes to be seen against the black background and the vibrancy of the colours was too high. I decided to use the acrylic which was weaker in pigment in order to get more transparency between the colours and the black background. I used a wider brush too, which gave me more texture in the marks created by the acrylic. I used marks with more movement than before, as the fluidity of the marks mixed with the texture of the brush strokes added a lot more energy to the piece. I then did another piece using