Drawing Skills 1: Pt 2; Project 2 Still life – Ex 2 – Still life in tone using colour

I used bendable pencils in 3 colours (blue, red and yellow) to complete this exercise. I’m not really sure if I did it right and found during the exercise that I had difficulty distinguishing the difference between tone and shadow, I still really don’t understand and am not sure if this exercise has helped me to reach a better understanding.

To create this piece I started by sketching an outline of the still life – these are all objects which sit on my window sill, which I thought was also a good setting because of the strength of natural light coming in and against the objects.

I used the blue pencil for the darkest tones, scrunching my eyes to help pick these out, I also took a photograph which I referred to as I find this also helps to identify the different areas of tone which are sometimes difficult to differentiate with the naked eye.

Next I used the red pencil for the mid tones but also layered this colour over the dark tones – this is where in hindsight I think I may have gone wrong in the brief, but it felt more instinctive to do this, and to be honest I’m trying not to be too rigid with my perceived rules and use my instinct more!

Lastly I used the yellow for the lightest tones and again also layered this over the other colours, this layering I felt gave an additional depth to the different tones I was creating and I am happy with the end result. I did take some time to reach the end point – several times I thought I was finished but found that the depth of colour was far heavier from left to right so I spent a lot of time correcting this. I think this had been in part because I initially started the work in the evening, but completed it over several days and at different times of day – due to my varying availability. The fact that I had a photograph helped in part but my preference was to work from the real objects because of their 3 dimension. I also found that whilst I thought I was creating a more balanced image it was only when I then photographed it that I was able to spot the flaws and correct them.

The finished piece is below.