#drawingvegetables

Finished picture in coloured pencils by Maria from this set-up (below).

Acrylic rendering by Angela of this set-up (below).

Water colour rendering by David of this set-up (below).

Drawing by Eve in pastels on black paper from this set-up (below):

Coloured pencil version by Julie of this mushroom (below)

...followed by her quick pencil version.

More mushrooms, by David:

Pumpkins are not the only veg …but they do take the starring roles at Hallowe-en.

This was the first of two Still Life sessions with an invitation to venture into colour techniques. As we are generally pencil-based and I don’t much cover material techniques, for most of us the session involved exploring - and sometimes struggling with - the technical possibilities offered by various different materials. So David (above) used colour pencils, and Angela (next three below) used acrylics:

…while Peter (below) tried wax resist under watercolour.

Later at home, David used the same wax resist technique, spattering hot wax, to get this effect on his pumpkin:

Meanwhile in the next-door Mushroom Studio, Jane (below) used watercolour while Prue used colour pencils to draw (I think) the same mushroom.

JulieMac grappled with oil pastels…

…and then colour pencils:

Generally it was the the subtlety of coloured pencils that seemed to be particularly suited to the delicacy of these particular vegetables –  as Maria and Prue showed (below):

Esther used colour pencils for a couple of studies of the pumpkin on a sheet:

though perhaps the pumpkin had most presence in Nneka’s ink version:

When it came to a bunch of grapes, Jane proved that a thick brush loaded with watercolour is too blunt an instrument for such precise little forms, and Prue with pencil and Nneka with feltpens did much better:

Jane’s water colour approach worked better with a looser subject:

and – looser still – in a composition reminiscent of 1950s Graham Sutherland...

And Lynn used green paper very well to give a basis for her broccoli study: