The Lota, the Jar and the Folded Cloth
A candidate with low vision (60 per cent disability, 40 minutes extra time and a permitted desk lamp) is drawing a still-life group in coloured pencil on half-imperial cartridge: a brass lota standing on a low stool, a half-filled glass jar, a wooden block and a blue cotton cloth folded into three ridges. The light comes from a single window on the left; the permitted lamp is clamped to the left edge of the board so that it does not contradict the window. Ninety minutes into a three-hour paper the sheet shows the lota's mouth ellipse tilted up to the left instead of lying level; the jar's mouth drawn as two separate curves with the near arc far deeper than the far arc; the cloth folds indicated with dark outlines and no change of plane; the cast shadows of the lota, jar and block falling in three different directions; the block's top and front faces carrying the same tone; and the brass given one hard white highlight but no reflected light or dark accent. The candidate asks whether to tear up the sheet and start again.
1. Rank the six faults in the order you would correct them, and justify the ranking by what each fault destroys in the reading of the drawing.
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Rank by dependency, not by how ugly each fault looks.
- Shadow direction (three directions). A group lit from one window has one shadow family. Three directions tell the viewer there are three light sources, so the objects stop belonging to one space. This is the cheapest fault to fix and it governs every other tone decision.
- Ellipse geometry (lota and jar). The major axis of every horizontal circle on the stool must stay parallel to the ground line, however the board is tilted. A tilted lota mouth makes the pot look as if it is sliding. The jar mouth is one continuous ellipse; drawing the near arc much deeper than the far arc turns a flat circle into a bowl and changes the apparent eye level.
- Block tones (top = front). Form is read from tone before edge. If the top and front planes match, the block flattens into a hexagon and the light direction becomes unreadable again.
- Cloth folds. Outlines describe the edge of a fold, not its turn of plane. Folds need three tones: lit plane, core shadow, reflected light.
- Brass reflected light and dark accent. A refinement only; it pays off after steps 1 to 3 are secure.
Steps 1 and 2 are structural and global: every object added later inherits the error, so they must come first. Steps 3 and 4 make the form legible at a distance. Step 5 is metal quality, not structure.
2. The candidate has 90 minutes left. Give a minute-by-minute plan for what to correct and what to leave, and state the reasoning behind leaving anything.
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0-15 min, light. Choose the window as the authority (the lamp is on the same side, so it can stay as fill). Erase all three cast shadows and redraw them as one family: each shadow starts at the object's contact edge and runs to the right, slightly towards the viewer, shortening with the height of the object. Check that the lota's shadow is the longest and the block's the shortest.
15-40 min, construction. Redraw the lota mouth as a single ellipse with its major axis parallel to the stool edge, then check with a pencil held horizontally against the sheet. Do the same for the jar: one continuous ellipse, near and far arcs equally curved about the axis. Adjust the jar's far vertical edge so the vessel does not taper.
40-70 min, planes. Separate the block's top and front with two full tones. Rebuild the cloth using three values only, following the ridge lines, and erase the outlines.
70-95 min, accents. Darkest dark at contact points, one sharp highlight on the lota, a soft reflected light on its shadow side.
95-115 min, separation. Darken the table plane behind the objects so their edges read.
115-120 min, stand back. Judge at two metres.
Leave the brass's fine engraving and the cloth pattern. They are decorative, and time spent on them would be taken from the light and construction fixes, which are what the examiner actually reads.
3. The candidate insists on starting a fresh sheet. Give your decision with reasons, and explain how the permitted lamp should be used so that it does not create a second light direction.
Read the worked answer
Do not restart. Ninety minutes of direct observation has already produced correct relative sizes, the group's placement and the cloth's fold pattern, and none of these is wrong. A fresh sheet returns to a blank page with 90 minutes left in a three-hour paper, and the candidate's low vision means observation is the slowest part of the work. Correcting in place is faster because the errors are local: shadows, two ellipses, one plane division and the fold modelling. Only if the cartridge were scored through by erasing would a restart be defensible, and a better answer then is to turn to the reverse side and transfer the group's main proportions by measurement rather than by eye.
Using the lamp. The lamp is a fill, not a second source. Three rules:
- Keep it on the same side as the window and lower in intensity than the daylight, so that its contribution is a slight lift of the shadow side, never a shadow of its own.
- Place it so it does not throw a hard shadow onto the paper or the stool; a diffused bulb or a sheet of tracing paper over the lamp removes the double shadow.
- Re-check once after the correction: hold a pencil vertically beside the lota and confirm that all the cast shadows still fall the same way. If a new shadow appears, the lamp has become a source and must be moved.