#tissue boxes

Here’s my latest set of drawings. I feel like my skills have really leveled up in this one. I’m starting to add shading (which I still haven’t been taught how to do) and details. I feel like I’ve come a long way in the month I’ve been working on learning to draw, and I’m proud of my progress. I’m also excited to keep learning and getting better so that I can eventually do illustrations for my stories.

Anyway. In the meantime, in the top left corner is my second attempt at the pineapple. I don’t love the stem as much, but I’m much happier with the body.

Below that is a Chinese vase that I inherited from my coworker D’s brother. She knows about my background in east Asian languages and culture, so she was kind enough to offer a lot of cool stuff like the vase to me when her brother died and she was cleaning out his house.

The vase has a dragon on the front, but there was no way I was taking on that challenge, so I just did the clouds on the back of the vase. The neck needs to be a little longer, but I’m happy with how this turned out.

Next, I did this rose-shaped votive candle holder. My mum has all kinds of decorative objects like this around the house, so I’m having fun borrowing them and drawing all kinds of different shapes. The candle holder was kind of a witch, though. Like, it took me an hour and a half. I think it turned out pretty well, but I felt completely in over my head the whole time I was drawing it. XD I tried some shading, but I honestly didn’t know where to begin. I think this was a little too complex for me at this point. But I did it! XD

Below the candle holder is another one of my mother’s tissue box covers. It turned out pretty well too. I challenged myself to add all of the details I could, and it was hard. It didn’t turn out exactly right, but I got pretty darn close, so I’m pleased with it.

In the top right corner, I drew a little milk carton. I had fun putting in all of the extra details like the barcode and the writing and designs on the front. It was really hard to make the writing recede into space on an angle like that. I don’t think I quite managed it. ^.^; Oh, well. We’re covering perspective in my drawing class too, so I’ll learn soon enough how to do it better. I’m very pleased with how straight my lines look, though. I did it freehand, so it’s not perfect, but I think it looks pretty good.

Please ignore the croissant on the plate in the bottom right corner. -.-; It didn’t turn out well. I got the shape of the croissant right for the most part, but the shading and making the croissant look like it’s actually sitting on the plate didn’t go very well. I was also trying to do the shadow cast by the plate and the reflection of the plate on the table, but...yeah. Oh, well. XD I tried, and I’ve come a long way since my teapot doodles, so that’s an accomplishment.

Above is a picture of the Chinese vase, the rose-shaped votive candle holder, and the tissue box with the tissue box cover over it.

Below is a picture of a croissant on a plate sitting on a table so that you can kind of see what I was trying to do with the shadows and reflection. XD I’ll get it next time.

Thanks for reading!

At top left, I tried to draw the Pisces glass from my zodiac set. I got it at a rummage sale over a decade ago because the designs (not pictured here because I’m not capable of that kind of detail yet) were really neat. It was really hard to draw glass because of the way it distorts. I tried my hand at shading too, and I think it looks so-so. I haven’t learned shading yet, so I have no clue what I’m doing. ^.^;

Next, I drew a tissue box, and I think it looks pretty okay. My lines are fairly straight for doing it all freehand, so I’m fairly happy with it. I’m excited for when I learn perspective so that I can make it look more realistic.

In the middle, I drew two views of the same banana. I like the bottom half of the first one and the top half of the second one. ^.^; This was a lot harder than I expected, honestly. I think I could draw a banana from my imagination without much difficulty, but it’s hard to actually look at what’s in front of you and draw that specific banana.

After the bananas, I drew another tissue box. My mum has a few different tissue box covers, and this is one of them. I really like the large ceramic flower just off center. The petals were a challenge, but I got almost all of them in there, and I’m proud of how this turned out.

Next, I drew my magnum opus to date at the time: the pineapple. It was a pain in the butt to do all of those little segments on the body of the pineapple. I wasn’t happy with how they turned out, so I did another version the next day. You’ll get to see that in my next drawing post. The stem was hard too, but I really like how it turned out. I’m very proud of my first pineapple attempt. XD

Last, I drew three strawberries of various sizes. Below is a close up with the strawberries rotated so you can see them better. I didn’t have enough room for them in a horizontal orientation, so I had to turn my paper vertical when I drew them. I’m trying to move towards drawing multiple objects at once, so doing three strawberries was good practice. It further drove home that the mental image I have of “strawberry” isn’t what real strawberries actually look like. I would have drawn them differently had I done it from my imagination.

Below is a picture of some of the objects from my drawings. From left to right we have the pineapple, the tissue box with the cover with the ceramic flower on the front, and my Pisces zodiac glass.

As a bonus, here are two images of various drawing exercises I’ve been doing. I got a few different books on drawing from the library, and that’s where I got the exercises.

This first one includes exercises in mark-making, line, shapes, and shading. The shading section is kind of embarrassing. XD I was supposed to make a sphere with the outer edges shaded dark getting progressively lighter as I neared the center. 

I’m a little proud of this because you can see in my first attempt that I had no idea what I was doing, but my attempts got a little better until my tenth attempt yielded something that looked more like what I was trying to do. At around attempt six, I was despairing about how I would never learn shading. It felt impossible, and I couldn’t figure it out, but then it suddenly got better. I’m proud that I was able to make progress.

Below, I did exercises that focused on making three dimensional shapes like cubes and cylinders. Then there was more shading which I still have no clue how to do. Oh, well. I’ll get there eventually. We’ll be covering shading in the art class I’m taking, so I’ll get better soon once someone shows me how to do it correctly.

Side note: I’m really happy with my Campbell’s soup can à la Andy Warhol in the bottom left corner. ^.^

Thanks for reading!