Refinement of observational drawing

After reflection my sketch book some areas of my work needing refining. The original purpose of this piece was a college based around Greece as the subject of my image was made in Greece and I had previously focused and completed observational drawings of the label detailing the origin. The book pages inked to the theme of traces that we are studying as it was a metaphorical trace of the origin of the subject. However after completing the college by adding different tones of paper to mimic the colours of the pot, I discovered that the harsh background took away from the delicate painting of the pot in drawing ink, thus the painting was lost in the chaotic background. In this sense my idea of linking the college with an observational drawing wasn't successful and actually took away from the whole purpose of the piece. In an attempt to refine and generally improve the image, I decided to use the technique of emulsion to tone down the background and draw attention back to the main painting. In the first image I used a wide paintbrush and painted over the whole background with emulsion, this toned down the background considerably an made the centre of the image seem much more focal. However many of the original lines were lost in the painting of the emulsion, I considered painting back over the image but I decided I liked the organic nature of the image.

For the refinement of the second image in this style I wanted to experiment with different ways of applying emulsion to the image by using pieces of cardboard to paint onto the image. First of all I used a small rectangle and used the fat edge to create direction marks with the emulsion layering different types of shape and line onto the image, adding depth and character.

After applying that layer to the image I still thought that it needed different textures adding to make the image more complex. I took the piece of cardboard that I used to paint on the first layer and pealed the top section of cardboard away, this exposed the rough texture inside the cardboard. I then used this to speckle paint onto the page, when first applying it a round texture was created, this contrasted to the smooth nature of the page and the painting already there. Upon layering this texture a more dense colour can be made. By testing different techniques around the piece it took away from the background while still adding detail and texture for a much more successful piece. I feel the second attempt at using emulsion worked out far better than the first, creating a more complex and organic looking image.