This project was about drawing two still life groups, one focusing on line and the other focusing on tone. I did two pairs of drawing: First I worked on an arrangement of vegetables and made two drawings (line and tone), then I did two more on an arrangement of fruits.
Still life of vegetables – line drawing
I chose broccoli, five tomatoes, two turnip cabbages, and three potatoes and arranged them on a small wooden table. It took me quite a while until I was satisfied with the composition. The potatoes were added after a series of unsuccessful arrangements and they seemed to round the group off. I was trying to combine smooth and textured forms in a way that went well together and left enough space to breathe for each of the different textures. I was interested in the inner structure of the broccoli, the round forms and lengthy twigs of the turnip cabbage, and the smooth surface of the tomatoes. These were in contrast to the twiggly character of turnip leaves and the outer areas of the broccoli.
In earlier line drawings, I had been very tense because I did not want to make “false lines” because they cannot be corrected. This time, I deliberately chose a more sketchy approach, as if I was drawing with a pencil, and permitted myself to make errors. They are indeed disturbing in the final drawing but it was nevertheless a much more pleasant drawing experience.
I had some difficulties getting the proportions right and there are some errors in the placement of objects as I drew them, but overall I think it’s a nice composition which fills the paper effectively. Maybe I could have improved the drawing by just continuing and emphasizing correct lines to bring out the forms a bit more.
And while I was at it, I stayed with the composition for the next drawing.
Still life of vegetables – drawing in tone
Since I liked the still life group which I had set up for the previous exercise, I thought it would be interesting to do a second drawing in a different technique and medium. I chose chalk pastels for it and used rough pastel paper.
I followed instructions to begin with one colour for dark tones, then a different colour for medium tones, and a third colour for light tones. But there were big problems with my choice of colours: I used dark brown for dark tones (the wooden table and some shadows), dark green and red for medium tones (outside of broccoli, turnip leaves and tomatos) and pale yellow for light tones (inside of broccoli, twigs and root of turnip cabbage, and potatoes). This choice was informed by the attempt to use actual object colours, but this did not work at all. I think I wasn’t very successful in drawing the objects, they are not very recognizable.
I think this is because the paper size was too small for the task, and I did not have enough place to work out details in my rather fast and loose technique. Also, it didn’t work to draw with light over dark colours, the green and red pastel sticks didn’t match object colours and I didn’t manage to work towards the correct colours.
I think this drawing would improve if I chose a larger format, and I’d use A2. It would probably benefit from an initial pencil sketch to help me orientating about the objects on the table. Then I think with pastels, I would need to “try harder”, i.e. take more time to get the colours and object details right. The pastel colours do not fit out of the box so I would need to develop a technique permitting to mix colours until they are more truthful to the objects.
Reflections on the two drawings
Overall I think it was an important learning exercise. I was quite satisfied with the line drawing, less so with the tone drawing. I think I will take the time to draw another composition. While the A3 sheet was ok for the line drawing, the size felt inappropriate for the pastel drawing. A3 should work better with a finer colour medium. Maybe I’ll try coloured pencil next time.
Still life of fruits – line drawing
I did another line drawing composition. I found it quite difficult to decide on a background, and while I was certain that I wanted to draw a pineapple, it took a while until I had chosen the fruits to combine it with. I think if it weren’t for the exercises, I’d rather just draw what I see instead of deliberately arranging objects, choosing a background etc. Somehow the naturally occurring compositions I see around me have more appeal to me, as if hazard was the better composer.
But after roughly an hour I had found a rather simplistic arrangement of pineapple, grapes and flat peaches which I found good enough for drawing. I chose the Faber Castell artist felt pen which has a soft tip that permits to draw lines of differing widths, almost like a fine brush. Until now I had only made some tiny experiments with this pen, so I was curious to use it for the natural forms.
I briefly considered to draw a pencil sketch first to outline shapes and proportions on the paper, because I thought this would help me not to loose orientation while drawing with the black pen. But I decided to be brave and do without. I observed the arrangement for a while to get acquainted with the objects’ proportion, and I searched for a relatively secure starting point from which to develop the entire drawing. I was afraid that if I would begin just “somewhere” then I’d risk to loose control over the drawing, for example extending one object too much to fit with the remainder of the arrangement.
After a while, I decided to start at the left lower edge of the pineapple and worked my way upwards. I chose this point because I felt that it represented a central orientation from which I could roughly estimate my space needs upwards (the pineapple hight) and to the right (pineapple width), leaving some room for the wooden plate with the other fruits to the left, right and bottom.
I drew the pineapple’s body contours first, then some grape contours, and then the plate outline with remaining grapes and peaches. Then I continued with the pineapple structure and drew its leaves at the end. The most difficult part of the drawing was the texture of the pineapple. I had problems with eye-hand coordination, with focusing on details, and continously got lost when I switched between loking on the pineapple and looking on the sheet to control what I was drawing. These difficulties are not unknown and I’m not quite sure how I can resolve it. Maybe it would be good if I stop switching between object and drawing, and just keep my eyes focused on the object. I will try that out.
Other than that, I like the drawing. I think the paper is nicely filled and the pineapple structure is interesting and recognizable, even though it’s not very orderly nor accurate. From the line drawing approach, I was more relaxed than with the single object line drawings, but tried to exert more control than with the first still life group. I wanted to avoid erroneous lines and therefore paid attention to the intersection of objects, not drawing through intersections but changing line direction instead. I think this and the thicker line are the reasons why this drawing appears more solid than the first still life group line drawing.
I see room for improvement in the pineapple texture, and maybe the wooden plate would benefit from some texture. I could have chosen a more interesting background, but on the other hand, my main interest in this drawing was the pineapple texture and a textured background would probably have distracted from what was essential for me in this drawing. The proportion of the wooden plate is not correct, it appears too much like a square but in fact the black side line indicates the longer side of a rectangle shape.
Still life group of vegetables – drawing in tone
After I had finished the drawing and made a pause, I wanted to draw the arrangement as still life group in tone, to complete another pair of drawings sharing the same composition. But I also thought that another study of the pineapple texture only might be beneficial. I opted for the still life group in tone and chose colour pencil this time, because I thought this would permit to avoid problems I had with the rather clumsy pastel sticks with fine details on a relatively small paper size of A3. I thought that with pencil colours, I could more easily build up the desired colours without quickly saturating the paper. I also thought it would be easier to maintain the light areas of my objects. Then I rearranged the objects because I thought it would be more interesting to have a different composition. But somehow I didn’t find an arrangement I liked and then realized that I was quite tired. I decided to make a break, hopefully to continue soon.
On the next day, I found an arrangement I liked and thought it might be nice to try this as a linocut, because the motive is quite clear in his forms. Then I began the still life drawing in tone of the fruits arrangement, using coloured pencil. I really enjoyed that drawing, especially the beginning of just sketching areas of dark, medium and light tones. I chose three different brown tones rather than different colour values, and this was much easier to work with than the strong colours I used for the previous still life group in pastel.
Things became more complicated as I proceeded. The main difficulty was with details… While I clearly saw a green diagonal cross-lined pattern on the pineapple, I wasn’t able to draw it. And my grapes were completely invented… I don’t know why this is but I’m not able to focus on particular object details and accurately draw them. My eyes just loose their refererence point, and this is reflected in the drawing, I have lots of lines with loose ends. It’s strange really and I’m not sure how I can improve this. Maybe restriction to less information, or a technique of really not lifting up the pen from the paper and the eye from the object and draw without looking, more or less.
Nevertheless, the drawing has some appeal to me, it’s very light and sketchy but despite the few details I have managed to capture, I think the objects are recognizable. Also, building up the objects’ colours worked nicely just as I had expected. I found getting the colours (approximately) right much easier than with pastel as in the previous still life drawing.
I think the drawing wasn’t finished then. I’d have like to improved the pineapple texture and be more detailed with the grapes. On the other hand, this would have risked to make the drawing heavy and solid rather than light and fresh, so I wasn’t sure whether to leave it as it was or continue working on the details.
But it turned out that I did not continue working on this drawing. Maybe it’s just for documenting how far I’ve gotten, leaving much room for future improvement. I think it would be good to draw more often.
I did a study of the pineapple surface pattern in the sketchbook, enlarging and drawing only a few elements of it. Very complicated. I think I should be doing more of this and keep at it. This drawing was “not enough” but maybe with time I’ll get there, to capture this type of structures. I feel that currently I give up too early… lack of concentration, eyesight problems, not enough inner calmness. It would be good to improve on these three things.
