Exercise: Quick Sketches around the House

For this exercise, I choose to draw sketches in my dining room.  This room is quite decorative – I have a large table, chandelier, large bay window, high ceilings, picture rail, large gilt mirror and quite a number of ornaments (vases, plates, picture frames, etc).

I sketched this room using graphite, charcoal and indian ink drawn with a stick. 

As there is a large table in the centre of the room, it is difficult to the full height of the room, and so show the perspective fully.  The above drawing demonstrates this – although it has plenty of interest with the furniture, mirror and ornaments – you don’t really get the interior perspective because of the lack of converging lines.

This drawing is in the opposite corner and, because it is next to the window, gives very good tonal variations as the corner is in quite deep shade.  Although the lines of the drawers on the sideboard are well out, it the view was broadened to include the ceiling, and because of the corner, would provide a good view to demonstrate interior perspective.  The shade under the lampshade also adds another layer of contrast here.

This view is from in front of the piano and mirror, looking across the table, into the hall, and into the study on the opposite side of the house.  As this view has the corner of the room, foreshortened door and the reduction in scale for the opposite doors, it is interesting in terms of perspective, but unfortunately, there is not much interest in terms of ornaments (except the cups and plates on the shelf on the wall).  Tonally, it is also balanced in terms of darker shaded areas behind the door and in the corner, with the light coming from the window (out of view) in the study.  I am also not too sure of the angle of the floor – think it may be too steep, and the diamond tiles on the floor were difficult to get right – think the space between the doors is too wide and should have been narrower.

This view is slightly too closed in to get the full corner of the room in (standing by the window for this one) although the angle of the door, sideboard and boxes give an impression of the perspective.  Sadly I couldn’t move back any further to widen the view.

This view is sitting down at one corner of the dining table and looking across towards the piano.  I did this view because I liked the interesting objects and the dark shadow areas under the piano and behind the chair, although it doesn’t really show perspective very well!