I chose to draw a group of vegetables - a large beetroot, a pepper cut in half, a couple of carrots with their leafy stems still attached, some nasturium leaves and a tomato. The medium I chose was red drawing ink and dip pen, which looks quite intense and striking. I deliberately chose items that were inherently connected (by all being natural, edible forms) but wanted as much variety in shape as possible for more of a challenging and interesting result. I focused on the outlines of the vegetables to begin with and tried quite hard to draw with a continuous line, to keep the objects connected. Then I drew in the detail - the seeds inside the pepper, the veins on the leaves and the hair-like fibres poking out of the root vegetables. My impulse is always to shade in areas quite early on in a drawing, so it was actually quite difficult not to this time. When I stood back from the drawing initially it was hard to see what the objects were. It looked quite alien, and the bright red ink didn't help this much, but after more detail had gone into the work and I'd indicated areas of cast shadow using sweeping lines, the objects began to have more life in them. Drawing the background in simple horizontal lines also helped the composition hugely.
I felt it was a shame that only half the tomato was in view - the drawing looks as though it has been cut short and would look more whole and well balanced in my opinion if the rounded edge of the tomato could be seen. I also feel that there is an issue with depth in the drawing. Of course it's clear that some objects are in front or behind the other, but the drawing overall looks flat. Some of this will be down to the lack of tone and shadow, but I think it would have helped to have made some of the objects stand out further by using thicker line or darker patches to indicate their prominence in the group, or otherwise finer line and lighter patches to indicate their background status. The leaves look too solid - they don't look fragile enough. I think it was a mistake to have made the outlines of all the objects the same thickness - in hindsight, this is not a helpful way to show off the qualities of the singular objects themselves. I like the beetroot and the pepper, but the other objects are too strong in comparison when they should be less so.
Exercise: Still life group using tone
This time I chose a bowl of apples and half a lemon, a couple of shells and a banana. I sat the objects on some cardboard and a piece of fabric. I sat almost directly above the composition. I began with a brown pencil crayon, working in the darkest areas and ignored completely the outlines of the objects. What I noticed here was that unlike the line drawing the objects were already looking like fruit and shells, even at this early stage and just merely with their darkest areas indicated. I used green pencil for the midtones and yellow for the lightest. The fruit I think is fairly well represented, but I could have worked more on the shells, perhaps using some stippling and even leaving some areas blank to show where they are free of tone. I wonder now why the shadow of the bowl was only a midtone green colour and not a darker brown tone...
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