Exercise: Viewpoint

For this exercise I chose ‘workshop’. It was, not the most exciting theme from the selection. However, as I was staying at a friend’s house at the time I had very limited resources to create a collection of objects. I did have a desk that I was working at with my art equipment, which is why I chose this theme.

I tried to be unusual with the positioning of the camera in order to make the scene more interesting. I found that I quite liked the shots where the camera was lower and gave more of an interesting perspective of the objects. I did some sketches from my photos by cropping them into different frames.

I chose the above as my final composition and frame and drew it in my A4 sketchbook. I tried to keep the lines clean and added a little shading to emphasise shapes. I felt that this frame was the most successful as it showed a range of objects where as some of the others, although more interesting, it was harder to see what the scene was meant to be. I felt that this one clearly showed that it was a ‘workshop’ or working desk.

I found this exercise valuable to teach me to find and experiment with new perspectives rather than settling for the first one I think of and to use this technique to find another more suitable one. I will bear this in mind as I go forward with my course to try to think more about the best perspective and layout for my illustrations.