What we did: In art class we were instructed to draw a three dimensional ball in a flat surface. The objective of the task was to make the ball look as realistic and three dimensional as possible by applying tone and the shading techniques we had been working on for the past few lessons. We started out by outlining the flat surface and shape of the ball very lightly using shading pencils which came in various tones. We then decided in which way the light was going to hit the ball in order to decide where to place the shadow and how to shade the background to help show add to the effect of a three dimensional ball. We then started on shading the ball itself by shading in the section of the ball furthest from the light with the darkest shade we were going to use in the overall picture. 

     I started by choosing the point at which the light would hit the ball, which in my drawing was the top right corner. Due to where I chose the light to hit my circular outline i stared using the darkest shade from the bottom left of the ball. I lightly drew curved lines around the inner edges on both sides of the ball, the lines would gradually get straighter and straighter as i got closer to the center. these lines went approximately a third of the way up the ball and resembled flower petals in the way that they were drawn. The lines were a guide for me to follow while i was shading and filling in my circle to look like a three dimensional ball. Using a curved motion while colouring the ball helps in giving the illusion of the ball being three dimensional because it would follow the natural cure of a ball and show how the light would naturally hit a ball in reality. I started to use my darkest shade and colour with curved motions like the guiding lines, as i got closer to the end of where the guiding lines that i previously drew were ending i slowing started to apply less pressure to my colouring resulting in the shade gradually getting lighter. Once I got to the end of my guiding lines there was a visible gradual change in tone from dark to lighter as i reached closer to the point where the light would hit, however that was only a third of the way up the ball so i took a different pencil which was just a few shades lighter then the previous shade a had been using. I started colouring with the same curved motion with a slight decrease in the pressure i added to the pencil. I continued doing this until the whole ball had almost been filled with different tones which got lighter and lighter the closer i go to the light. In the end i left a small portion of the top right of the ball which was closest to the light plain white, this i because once i blended everything the plain white would gain a slight tone and look like the whole ball had a gradual dark to light tone and 3D effect. To blend i used a small piece of tissue which i rubbed across my drawing.

  To do my background i started to use my darkest shade from the left and  colour in a straight horizontal motion. I gradually started to apply less pressure as i got the right, resulting in a lighter tone the closer i got to the light. Unlike the ball i did not leave the portion closest to the light white because i wanted the entire background to have a tone so the ball would stand out. I also blended the background using a tissue.

For the shadow i lightly sketched a thin oval on the left under the ball and coloured it using a dark shade and used the tissue to blend and smooth it out.

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Ball On Table Painting

The ball on a table painting was done using a similar idea to the drawing of a ball. This painting built on our previous skills learned of understanding how to make an object look three dimensional and understanding how to use different tones in a picture. Unlike the drawing of a ball in which the dark areas of the ball had to be added on by colouring, in this painting we used a black paper and painted on the areas where the light would hit using white paint. In this painting we selected the point where the light would hit the ball and then actually use white paint to paint on the light. We used curved motions to paint similar to the way we drew on our guiding lines in our ball drawing. We would do gentle flicks in those curved motion to give the effect of gradual decrease in the tone and the light hitting the ball. For the shadow we drew i thin oval at the base of the ball, opposite to where the light would hit. I then drew a line on which the ball would rest on creating a section for the table (the shadow was inside this section). I painted everything in that section white apart from any part of the ball which had over;aped with it and the shadow. This gave a realistic effect as there was a clearly visible shadow for the ball. 

        Doing this painting further developed our use of tone and the impotence of tone in making a painting or drawing look three dimensional and realistic. This painting showed us the alternate way of using tone by adding the light to a picture by using a darker paper rather than just adding the darker tones on a white piece of paper. This painting was also quite important because it would put into perspective how we needed to work hen making our first ever lino print of a ball on a paper. A lino print follows the same idea as this painting, rather then taking away (taking away because in a lino print you carve out the desired area rather than colour in) the darker shades we took away the lighting. 

Even Better If:

- I believe something i could improve in this painting is the brush strokes i used to show the lighting on the ball. On some strokes i applied a little too much pressure when doing the flick motion resulting a less gradual change in tone in the ball and having  slight uneven amount of white added in places where the lighting would be shown. To improve this i could be a more light handed when it came to strokes of this point and collect approximately the same amount of paint on my paintbrush for each stroke. 

What Went Well:

+ I think that the table section was quite well painted.The white paint on the table looked very smooth and even like one solid block of white rather than it having an uneven or patchy look. 

Ball Lino Cut Out / Print

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This lino cut out is made using the ball on a table painting as a plan. In a lino everything being cut out will act as the lighting and the remainder of the lino will act as a plain black or solid coloured background.I followed the exact same lines as my painting by taking away from my lino the white lines i had painted onto the paper. All the parts i wanted to be left dark or black i simply did not cut out of the lino similar to how i did not add any white to the dark parts of the painting. To show the light hitting the ball and show a gradual change in tone i first started cutting out in deep cuts the section of the ball that would consist of the lightest shade. I used the same idea of using curved lines to show off the and match the circular outline of the ball as i did for my ball painting and drawing. Although i was making deep cuts i tried to keep the cuts thin so i could add more lines giving the lightest section fuller look.Once i got closer to the middle of the ball where the shade was getting darker i started using fewer lines however, still of the same thickness. I also made the lines further apart. Making this lino was important because this was practice for making our final print.

Even Better If:

- I think that when i was cutting out the light from the ball i started a bit too far down causing there to be a gap in the cuts between the outline of the ball and the table resulting in a part of the ball's outline blending into the background.

What Went Well:

+ I think that the table area from my lino print had a really nice effect because rather then removing the entire background i was carving in small horizontal lines. I left a little space between each line which made small lines run through the whole table.

+ The way i cut out the light from my ball did make the ball look somewhat realistic and gave a nice effect to the overall cut out.

Final Lino Print   

Our final outcome of this unit was a self portrait print. We did not have to use  just our face for this instead we could make anything that represented us or our hobbies. To choose our ides we made mind maps about ourselves which would help us decide what our print would be of. I chose to make a print of the guitar whit two hands playing it because i am very passionate about the instrument and thought it would represent a big part of who i was.  

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