For this exercise I was asked to select a single natural object. I chose a dead rose bud from my garden. I chose this because I love all of its tiny beautiful detail, the closer I look at it the more detail I can see. I tried to introduce contrast into my drawing by using strong darks and very light tones.

I used a3 paper and a variety of soft- medium pencils. I lightly sketched in the outline of my object then I screwed up my eyes to identify the darkest areas. I firstly worked on the stem and leaves and  I began to tone in the darkest areas of my drawing. I made sure I worked all around the area so that I could compare the tones of different areas of the drawing.
I practiced building up dark, medium and light tones, using my pencils and using a range of mark making techniques. I tried to get a varied effect by combining soft and medium grade pencils and altering the direction of the strokes I made. 

I tried to constantly review my drawing by stepping back from it and asking myself if I had sufficient contrasts and variation in marks.

I am not sure if I am pleased with my final result. 
I found it very difficult enlarging such a small object to such a large scale, in doing this I think I lost some of its accuracy. 
I also am not very pleased with my pencil work in some areas. Some areas my pencil work is too heavy and some of my small detail appears to be outlined. This results in some areas of my drawing looking quite flat. 

I am pleased with some areas of detail and texture, but overall I would really like to see my pencil work develop and improve over the duration of this course.