Remnants - school art project

the skull of an animal and shells, left behind to be symbols of life that once existed; all that's left are these hard and brittle reminders; reminders of the sometimes harsh fact that death is simply a part of life, a path that every creature must one day take.

--

i'm finally in an art class (my first one!) and this was the first project i was presented with. a contour line study and smudge shading excercise. it turned out to where i had one of theb est renderings. we were supposed to pick objects that we wanted to do a countour study of (not looking at the paper while drawing, except to relocate your pencil) and then shade it accordingly. these items are definitely not drawn to scale. they were each drawn separately and then transferred onto a sheet of heavy drawing paper (about 18x20 or something like that). i'm very pleased with the results, though i was quite frustrated by the end of it and i think i probably could have done some areas better than they turned out.