We started the class by practicing the ellipse. You can’t draw an ellipse, you have to swing it. You practice swinging your hand over the paper and then—keeping that swing—you lower the pencil and there’s your ellipse. You fill a couple of sheets of paper with these practice ellipses and then when you feel you’ve got that swing, you slide your drawing onto your board and you swing those elliptical canister tops into place.
Alejandra was faced with a still life consisting of ellipse-stressing canisters and some droopy drapery. But in her drawing nothing is canned and nothing droops. In her drawing, the drapery looks like oak tree roots and the ellipses seem to fade into memory. She either found this set up very exiting or boring beyond tolerance, because something in her imagination popped.
Notice how the carefully cropped selection (right) coveys even more tension, drama and mystery than the whole composition (top). We will have more examples of cropping in the following two posts.
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artamaze by Katherine Hilden 