Ellina Jung
Relevé
Prompt: How we perceive and how we communicate edge quality and value can alter our experience spatially, emotionally and psychologically. Consider an environmental/social or economic topic/current event that you would like to create as a focal point for your drawing. You will create 1 series of five drawings (sizes can vary for each “frame”) (around 64 square inches TOTAL plus a 1 inch border) which will move like a scale from atmospheric to sharp. It will be your decision to emphasize a specific location/object within the composition as it comes into focus or if you prefer to work up the entire composition in focal gradients.
Because one goal of the prompt was to explore how edge quality can affect our spatial, emotional, and psychological experiences, I wanted my subject to be about something that was personal to me. Another requirement of that experience was that it had to be progressive because I knew that I would be depicting a scene that goes from blurry to sharp. I wanted my final output to be simple and understandable. Using photos of my own foot and sourced images online as references, I drew a dancer’s foot turning while sinking from relevé (position in very left box). I utilized tape, vine charcoal, and compressed charcoal to control the edges and manipulate the values while detailing the feet. The first image shows a ballerina’s foot en pointe in the shape of a pointe shoe. Despite the lack of shoe details, the viewer can imagine the pointe shoe due to the boxy nature of the toes amidst the fleeting strokes of blurred charcoal. My final composition displays the boxes cascading downwards in congruence with the lowering heel in each image. In the first box, I aimed to deliver the sense of lightweight movement that ballerinas strive to achieve stage. As the charcoal and details of the foot become more and more defined as the eye moves throughout the piece, the image of the pointe shoe disappears, slowly revealing a sense of heaviness. The final box shows a bandaged and bruised foot facing the viewer. In this piece, I encourage the viewer to realize the hardships that performers endure in order to put their best foot forward in front of an audience.