Negative space 3

Here's the last one - it's quite a windswept looking plant, and me drawing it with great strokes of charcoal brings that out well.

Negative space 2

Here's the second negative space drawing - can you tell that we don't keep too many healthy-looking pot plants at the moment? It's this time of year really, but I thought this one looked so funny with just one leaf that it'd make an interesting negative.

Negative space 1

The negative space around plants. Now, I was only really required to do one of these, but I don't like the look of them, to be honest, so I did some more to be a bit more creative. This is of course a plant in a pot, and the leaves that fall around it. I didn't find this exercise too inspiring, but that's probably because I didn't get a nice picture at the end - I'm sure that I've learnt something about the subject subconsciously.

Bowl of Oil Pastel Fruit

I quite like this picture - it has nice colours and depth in the shading and highlights... Although that apple at the front bothers me. It did balance on the edge like that, but I don't seem to have captured it properly. It looks like it was stuck on after the rest of the picture was done.

Oil Pastel Collection (Tablecloth)

I say "(Tablecloth)" (hmm, brackets inside quote marks. I wonder if that's allowed) because that's probably what you'll remember about this picture - how wild ours is. I think I need more practice with oil pastels, so I had a go and did this. Nice and bright. The mushroom and onion didn't come out as well as I hoped they would, but they're quite pale in contrast to the fruit, so I guess I can excuse them. Anyway, I'm getting better with the pastels already - the next thing will be to figure out how to do shadows better with them!

Oil Pastel Fruit and Veg.

Now I'm not too pleased with this - I think it looks a bit generic. I have a real hate for the oil pastel, and looking at this again... What I mean by generic, is that it looks like what anyone would do when faced with this setup and materials, and that's not good enough! The forms are a little wobbly and ill-defined, the plate looks like a roughly-cut circle of paper, and although the paper started out yellow, the bright bananas have made it look white again. Still, it's difficult to draw a pineapple and not have something interesting about it - I think they're always good to include.

Ink Still Life Setup (with pineapple!)

When you thought it couldn't get any better! I think this is just great. The texture on the apple and pineapple came out really well. The orange and pink splodges, I should point out, are lychees. Now, they may not look all that much like lychees, but they're interesting and pretty fun anyway, so I like them.

Coloured Pencil Still Life Setup with Peppers

Now this is more like it. All looking more 3D, but with a nice bold look. The purple shading on the red pepper brings it out in a much more interesting way, like the orange on the yellow pepper. Maybe, looking back, I should have used blue on the green. However - I like this picture a lot - I think it might be my best natural form yet.

Pastel Still Life Setup with Peppers

Here's another nice bright picture - the peppers are average, the bottom-left leaf is quite nice, and the bunch of grapes is a bit confusing. But this is pastel, and I don't use it all that much, so I can't expect miracles. It's a nice range of tropically natural colours.

Ink Still Life Setup

This photo has come out a little strangely in the preview here, but it's pretty good when you zoom in, I assure you. This was a weird little exercise, but I think I got the textures of most of the objects down ok (perhaps apart from the central log). I think the moss on the middle pinecone and the twig from the pine tree are the best bits.

Dip Pen Experiment

From the last two drawings, I figured I could use a little more practice with the pens and got out my other old inks to have a go with - I tried to use a thicker nib that I didn't realise until it was too late liked to drip everywhere. I tried a little bit of paint over the blobs but the ink just seeped into it. Ah well, striking colours at any rate.

Dip Pen Ink Twig (more complicated!)

Here's a more interesting drawing - it's a different plant, obviously (I'm hopeless on their names though, so don't ask!). Having the main branches of the subject and the shivelled leaves gives it more of a sense of movement... It sort of has two different textures - which you'd think would come out much better in the previous drawing. This one is more of a success because I left out the shadows. I haven't mastered the pens to an extent that I could put them in with a subject like this.

Dip Pen Ink Twig

Now, you wouldn't know it from your first glance, but this is a twig and its shadow - the twig is in black and the shadow in 'sepia' which I must confess I thought would dry a bit lighter. Not my finest hour.