This project explored the variety of ways to create a three-dimensional object on a two-dimensional surface. Each person chose one animal for their representations. There were 16 representations of how to draw the animal. We drew each representation 12 different times, which resulted in a lot of animals. The 16 representations included: photo, gestural, painterly, graphical, shapes, alternate marking tools, one line, behavioral, textural, hybrid, alternate surface, icon, index, abstraction, and typographic. My two favorite categories were abstraction and typographic. The animal I chose was a lobster. My family is from Massachusetts and every summer we spend a couple weeks there with our extended family. Every trip, we get lots of seafood and at least one member of my family orders a lobster. That person is not me, but sea life has always interested me. I love looking for crabs underneath rocks at the beach and visiting aquariums. I thought choosing a lobster would be unique, and while it was, I did not realize how little a lobster does. It was a challenge but I learned a lot from drawing over 250 lobsters.
This project can be summed up in one word: exhaustive. It’s both exhaustive in how many animals we create and also how I feel at the end of this project. Despite creating so many lobsters, I feel that I am only on the brink in terms of what else I can create. There are so many different categories and styles to draw a lobster. I’ve only scratched the surface. At the beginning of the project, I was definitely more timid. I wanted to create the most perfect looking lobster each time. I started to relax during the second phase because I realized that quality sometimes isn’t what is needed. This project was about quantity and refinement, something I didn’t encounter that much before this project. This project pushed me out of my comfort zone in many different ways, especially in that I don’t consider myself an illustrator or drawer. However, I feel more confident in my drawing abilities. All it takes is drawing something a couple hundred times.