Yet Another Pencil Still Life (but with an avocado)

I think this one came out very well. As with all of my pictures, this doesn't come through as nicely in the preview here, but I've got my mum to thank for telling me that it'd look better darker every time I thought it was done. She was right. The lettuce withered a bit while I was drawing, so I don't know if it's as good as it could be, but overall I think it has depth and an interesting mix of textures.

Pencil Skull

Bit weird, but a pretty good drawing - could do with more definition between the shaded parts and the surface shadow, but again, seen bigger, is better! I did this with a very fine pencil and got in quite a bit of detail. Partly for the subject, this is a drawing I particularly like (of my recent efforts anyway).

Pencil Shells

Some minimal drawings of shells. I think the main problem with this drawing is that the shells themselves aren't very... Tall? So the shadows are incredibly thin. It looks like I haven't included them for the bottom two at all! The one in the bottom right is a very difficult subject anyway. Still, in a bigger size than this preview, they're pretty ok.

Ink Onions

This one isn't as successful as the other two - I was just going to do an onion, but it didn't really look interesting enough, so I cut it in half and drew both sides. Why wasn't it as successful? Although you can see what it is, the halves don't correspond properly - obviously, they are quite different inside, but not to this extent - I think for the second one, I started with the outline without thinking, rather than building out from the middle.

Ink Pepper

Slightly more interesting - this drawing has more depth to it than the last one; you can see the space inside the pepper. I feel a little clichéd drawing half a pepper, but after I did all those bright drawings of bell peppers, this one is a little more unsual.

Ink Lettuce

Quick ink drawing of a lettuce leaf. It's an alright picture - you can see what it is, and the ragged edges make for an interesting drawing. The positioning on the paper is no good though! I've never been a big fan of black and white drawing, as I don't think you can get a very realistic result - the lesson from these drawings is that something this simple (without even lifting the pen much) can still give you an idea of what the subject is. Pleasingly few lines describing a very complex form.

Pastel Tomato

While certainly a striking colour, the stalk doesn't work as well in smudged pastel, to say the least. I don't get the feeling of the stalk being grounded to the body of the tomato as well - it's light where there's a slight gap between the colours. Perhaps adding a pencil shadow on top would help next time.

Pen Tomato

I like this drawing - again you can see my grey pen running out, but I love the way all the thin strokes of the pen describe the shape. It gives the skin of the subject an unreal but pleasing texture.

Pencil Tomato

Here's a drawing with coloured pencil - it's not as nice in the photo, but I really went for it and drew as dark with the pencils as I could. I did the tomatoes separately because I was a little less sure it would work. I like this drawing a lot, however, and when it's a bit bigger you can see the shadows under the stalk. I think I like it so much because it's darker - it shows my progress from before the course (all my drawings on here marked with 'old') when all my drawings were so pale you could hardly see them!

Pastel Peppers

Even in the last of the set, the red stands out. Maybe it's my own preference for the colour, but I think it's the most true to life. The light being almost directly above makes the highlights look a little awkward though. Take note of this for next time. I should also say that leaving the red highlights 'til last was a good move, as drawing peppers and then trying to use my putty rubber to put the highlights in was not a good move!

Pen Peppers

Here's the peppers in pen - obviously, this is a rather old and dry set of felt tips trying to cover a large area of paper, but I thought it gave it a more interesting look. Again, the red is the best of the trio, looking more 3D and shinier. Could it be the subject or materials that hold the other two back? I think it's a combination. Maybe pastel peppers on coloured paper'd be nice!

Pencil Peppers

Peppers are always a pleasingly graphic subject, and these ones are no exception - I liked them so much I thought I'd do three versions, and here's the first, in coloured pencil. The yellow one is quite flat, the green one is a bit better, but a glance are the red one and you get the shiny feel very well.

Red Onion

The pencil onion at the top here is much better than the other drawings in this series in my opinion - much closer to the object itself and much more rounded. The hightlight showed up really well on the skin of the onion, so I made it as white as I could. The pen one on the left is too pale, and the pastel too bright - but great colour, all the same! You might get away with the pastel in context, but here it looks a little flat and I don't think you can see what it is very well.

Three Onions

Three different materials again, and here's the next in the series - an onion. My grey felt tip was running out a bit, wasn't it? Still, the highlights are better and the colours are closer together than with the apples.

Shells

Here are some quick drawings of a green stone and some shells. The yellow/brown shells on the left are ok... but pastel is no good for small drawings of complex shell patterns - mark my words.

Pale stone

Here's one of my first attempts at the three different techniques on one page - what a disaster! The stone itself was very pale - but the drawings fail to capture the shape of it completely... it's smooth and rounded, and slightly longer than it is wide off to the top right corner. But it's certainly not what I intended!

Three Apples

Here are three apples I drew recently. The top one is coloured pencil, the left one is felt tip pen, and the one on the right is pastel. I took a chance and drew them all on one page! The shadows aren't too consistent with each other, but the apples are lovely together. The colours are even more vivid in real life.

Old Apples

Here's a couple of old apple drawings - a good example of me trying to use pastels like pencils!
As I'm starting on natural subjects, I thought I'd do some nice, bright, graphic drawings of fruit and veg.