Description
The piece depicts a skull coming towards a Roman helmet and a cross. I used charcoal on paper. I started by doing the general shapes of the objects and the background. Next, I focused on detailing the objects and the shading. Lastly, I erased to add highlights and darkened the shadows. The usage of the Roman helmet and cross was to convey a historical theme and to show how death eventually comes for us all. the overall mood and emotion behind the drawing is a dark and ominous motif. This is established through the absence of color which in this drawing is mostly black, but also includes white and grey tones. I also established this mood by using the rule of thirds to place the objects in the plane to create asymmetrical balance and interact these objects with one another creating an ominous feeling. To further this mood I used the contrasting values of white and black to create depth and contrast. This contrast between the two contrasting values represents the death and darkness within the Roman Empire which I hoped to illustrate with my objects. To continue to deepen the motif of the drawing I used differentiating values to emphasize the dark and light values. Also, the negative space of the dark helps to show the extremes contained within the drawing, the extremes represent the idea of death in the drawing.
