Initial Sketches and Drafts
Right from the beginning of the project, I decided that I wanted to give my painting a camping theme, because camping is a fairly large part of my life. The photograph above is of my initial sketch, made a couple of days after the project started, before I had a good understanding of what cubism is and what kinds of images it requires. I elected to trace a photograph of my backpacking tent from one of my camping trips, and put that tracing against a natural background.
However, once I learned how cubism works, I realized that it wouldn't be practical for me to have such an organic background. I figured that I could turn my tent into a collage of geometric-looking shapes, so I left that, but I realized that I would need to add something a little more geometric in the background. I tried to draw a backpack, but my sketch didn't turn out too well, and I knew that it would be harder for me to paint anything than it would be for me to draw it. So, I settled with something simpler: a child's drawing of a pine tree. Looking back, this was a good choice, because not only was it simpler, but it was much more geometric, and it invoked a natural feeling without needing a complicated background. Thus, my first draft of my art piece evolved (the photo is of my first draft, and the right photo is of the critique I received on my first draft):
However, once I learned how cubism works, I realized that it wouldn't be practical for me to have such an organic background. I figured that I could turn my tent into a collage of geometric-looking shapes, so I left that, but I realized that I would need to add something a little more geometric in the background. I tried to draw a backpack, but my sketch didn't turn out too well, and I knew that it would be harder for me to paint anything than it would be for me to draw it. So, I settled with something simpler: a child's drawing of a pine tree. Looking back, this was a good choice, because not only was it simpler, but it was much more geometric, and it invoked a natural feeling without needing a complicated background. Thus, my first draft of my art piece evolved (the photo is of my first draft, and the right photo is of the critique I received on my first draft):
I didn't make many changes based on my critique, so my second draft was mainly useful for transforming my sketches into collages of shapes, and for fleshing out the background. I also had to figure out how to incorporate the geometric requirements for the art piece; some requirements were easy to include, such as the shape requirements, and others were much harder, like as many of the quantified requirements. I ended up pulling whatever shapes I could out of the tent and the tree and just collaging shapes that fit the rest of the requirements into the background. The real challenge was specifically sizing various parts of the tent and the tree so that they could fulfill the requirements that they did, such as the surface area and volume requirements. The final step was adding color, which wasn't difficult. Below is a photo of my second draft.