Following my mini melt-down during my last life drawing session I decided I needed to go back to basics – grab some fruit and do a couple of quick studies. I love drawing fruit and veg – eggs as well. The reason is they give you a good opportunity to explore how light hits an organic form. Because of their curved nature you get to explore the dexterity of line – to almost none at all to the dark underbelly of the form you are drawing.
Really – drawing fruit and veg for me is the closest you can get to having a life model of your own – if that makes any sense at all!
When doing these very simple exercises I started to think of the possibilities of other experiments I could do. For example I would like to explore using different surfaces such as sand paper. Also using paper with a bit of tooth in it and staring with a dark background. Such as covering the whole surface in charcoal and working back into it with a rubber and a light chalk to achieve a sense of 3d and dexterity of line.
Anyway – though these exercises took me only about 20 mins I started to recognize where I was going wrong in the life drawing session – school boy errors really. Start with lightest tone first and build up.
