Up Close Eggs

Artists Create Original Art

The theme for the project was up-close and personal.  At first I didn’t know what to do.  I thought of multiple ideas, but I wasn’t sold on any of them for a long time.  However, I stuck with the egg idea after one of the warm up activities that we did in the class.  I was assigned a yellow piece of hard candy and I was supposed to draw it and give it value with chalk pastels.  It came naturally to me and I did pretty well on it.  I realized that the piece of candy required the same type of shading as the yolk in the egg idea. 

I eat eggs all the time and they are something that people eat without really realizing how cool looking they are.  I looked through multiple pictures on the internet trying to find pictures that suited my art style.  There were a lot of pictures that had multiple yolks in the pan.  I realized that if I wanted to have a strong and singular focal point I would have to draw just one.  Still, I used some of the other pictures to get an idea about how to properly shade. 

Most of the ideas were mine.  While I used pictures as references, I came up with the idea for the egg whites and the idea of having a purple background.  There was not one singular reference point that I modeled my egg after.  I would give myself a 3.

Artists Develop Art Making Skills

I have used pastels in the past, but I haven’t put much serious thought into how to use them or get the best results out of them.  Doing this project I have learned a lot more about specific techniques with chalk pastels.  I figured out how to smear the pastel to spread it out and make it appear smoother.  It also makes blending easier.  I had to deal with dust and smearing and learned how to control that.  I used multiple colors to achieve the values I wanted.   I would give myself a 4.

Artists Reflect

Before doing the project I thought about many things.  I tried to predict what problems I would face.  I saw that the biggest issue I would face was it looking too simplistic.  I am not a particularly good drawer, and simply drawing the outline of an egg and filling it with base colors wouldn’t look very detailed or appealing.  I realized that chalk pastels would make it better after drawing the candy. 

Around halfway into the project I stopped and started to analyze myself.  I saw that the egg looked good, but that the pan and the background were dark and boring.  I decided to color the background purple to match to yellow yolk, and put more effort into adding value and highlight to the pan.  This is how analysis helped me.  I would give myself a 4.