Drawing and Painting: Media, Techniques and Composition
This domain tests studio knowledge: whether you can select a medium for a purpose, control its behaviour, and build a composition using drawing and painting conventions. Questions may ask you to compare media, correct a perspective error, or explain how value and edges create form.
Media and supports
Graphite and charcoal are dry drawing media; charcoal offers rapid tonal mass but smudges, so fixative and a light touch matter. Ink gives crisp linear and wash effects. Watercolour is transparent, relies on the white support, and rewards wet-on-wet for soft passages and wet-on-dry for edges. Gouache is opaque watercolour. Acrylic dries fast and can be layered; oil dries slowly and supports blending. Paper weight, tooth and sizing affect absorption.
Composition and technique
Use a viewfinder to select the rectangle, establish the horizon and major axes, then place the focal point off-centre unless symmetry is intended. In one-point perspective, parallel receding edges meet at one vanishing point on the eye level. Build form through three value zones: light, middle and shadow, with reflected light and cast shadow.
Worked example
A still life of a bottle and cube sits on a table. The bottle's ellipse must align to the eye level; if the ellipse is too round, the object looks tipped. The cube's receding edges converge to one vanishing point. The light comes from upper left, so the cast shadow falls right, the bottle's highlight sits upper left, and the darkest accent is at the contact edge, not the centre of the shadow.
Traps
Do not outline objects and leave them flat; value does the modelling. Do not mix watercolour indiscriminately until it turns muddy. Do not paint acrylic over a wet oil layer. Avoid tangents where an edge just touches another shape. Check that every shadow agrees with one light source.