Drawing Archaeological Pottery

Although you can photograph pottery or make 3D scans of sherds or vessels, technical drawings of pottery are still very important because they represent the archaeologist's interpretation of the pottery in a standardized and conventional format, or Graphical Information Language (GIL), that emphasizes relevant and important attributes and omits others that might be distracting. By convention, the illustration also reconstructs as much of the whole vessel as possible in a cutaway view that shows a cross-section and both interior and exterior at a glance. In this video, I show how you can make pencil drawings of sherds that have previously been sawn along a radial section for petrography, then unsawn sherds and whole vessels. I then demonstrate how to turn those pencil drawings into publishable finished drawings on a computer, in this case, with Adobe Illustrator.
Some other videos you might find helpful:
   • Quick guide to pottery illustration. ...  
   • From drawing board to screen (pottery)  

Chapters
00:07 Introduction
04:51 Beginning to Draw Pottery
20:00 Reconstructed Vessel Drawing
27:54 Drawing Large, Complete Vessels
44:33 Scanning and Digital "Inking"
51:10 Conclusion

My book, The Archaeologist's Laboratory:
https://link.springer.com/book/10.100...

#archaeology #thearchaeologistslaboratory #illustration #archaeologicalillustration #pottery