About
Artist Bio
Contact
Site Map
Drawing Tips
Vegetables make great drawing subjects for beginners. Choose light colored veges which have interesting shapes and textures.
Here are some suggestions:
- Squash
- Peppers
- Onions
- Garlic
- Oranges
Do a study of each one, or arrange them into still lifes.
Powdered graphite can be applied with a bush to create delicate tonal washes. It's great for making skin tones and flower petal textures.
You can read more about how to make and use it on my powdered graphite page.
Make it easy to practice drawing. Keep extra pencils and paper near the chair where you watch TV at night and draw during commercials!
|
|
 |
 |
How to Draw a Shiny Ornament in Six Steps
Draw a shiny round ornament with reflections.
by Carol Rosinski
|
|
| Supplies
|
Step 1
Shiny ornaments are challenging to draw because of all the reflections. To keep things simple, I chose a round, gold colored ornament. I placed it in lighting that cast one clear shadow, got comfortable, and started to draw.
Using a B pencil, I drew a circle and added a cap.
|
|
|
|
Step 2
Next I added the hook and the shape of the shadow the ornament was casting. To help myself draw those lines in their right positions, I didn't draw them, I drew the negative spaces between them and the ornament. For instance, while drawing the hook I paid more attention to capturing the shape between it and the ornament than to the hook itself.
|
|
Step 3
Then I drew in the shapes of the largest and most clearly defined shadows and highlights. I saw three major shapes on the ornament and two on its cap. Each of these areas had many more reflections, shadows, and highlights within them but I looked for and drew the largest and most obvious shapes.
|
|
|
|
Step 4
Still using the B pencil, I hatched in each area of the ornament and its cast shadow. I made the hatching in each area a value that was between the darkest and lightest values I could see there.
|
Step 5
Switching to the 2B, I hatched in the darkest values of each area like this:
- On the top of the ornament, the edges were the darkest part and that dark value graduated to a lighter one near the center top. There were some dark reflections in this area that I hatched in, too.
- The middle section was darker near the edges, too, and graduated to a lighter value near the middle. I added the reflection of the hook, curving it a little to make follow the form of the ball.
- The bottom of the ornament was darkest near the edges, too.
- The cap had some very dark areas on both sides, down the middle, and where it met the ball.
- The shadow cast by the ornament was darkest near the ball's bottom edge. There was a secondary shadow between the ball and the cap that I hatched in. I darkened the hook and added a cast shadow underneath it.
|
|
|
|
Step 6
To finish the shiny ornament, I added the highlight details as follows:
- I used a kneaded eraser pinched into a point to lift out the next to the brightest highlights on the ornament's top. Then I used my battery powered eraser to lift out the brightest highlights. Because erasers aren't very exact, I used a sharp pencil to reshape the highlights.
- I used my kneaded eraser to gently lift a soft highlight in the middle section of the ornament on the left side.
- I used my battery powered eraser to tap out the little highlight reflections in the cap and added a thin loop at the top, too. I reshaped all those details with a sharp pencil and added a little value to them if they were too light.
|
|
|
