*DISCLAIMER: Credit goes to Oliver Hoffmann for creating this image of the two avocados back in 2007.*
Recently, I quit one of my restaurant jobs so I could free up more time for me to be creative once more. I was still hitting a creative block though, so for the past several days, I’ve been looking at tutorials on YouTube and practicing shading and blending techniques in my spare sketchbook.
During one of my shading exercises, an idea popped into my head and I recalled a past outline of two avocados that I had originally planned to do in colored pencil. I pulled out my drawing pad to see if it was still there and it was!
I decided to finish the piece using graphite pencil instead of colored pencil because that was what I was comfortable with (and still am today). But I lost the reference photo I had when I first made the outline sketch of the avocados, so I found something similar to what I remember. The reference photo is what you see at the start of this post.
It took me three to four days to complete this artwork using the blending techniques I practiced with in my sketchbook and I’m very pleased with how the drawing turned out! It was exactly what I wanted it to look like and might I add that it looks a little photo-realistic too?
For blending, I used my 2B, 3B, and 4B pencils, along with a Prismacolor Ebony graphite pencil I’ve had since college. An HB pencil was used to fill in any lines that helped separate the subjects from each other so that they didn’t look like they were blended together into one large subject.
There’s another outline of a past subject that I have in my drawing pad and I’ll be getting to that very soon. But I’m noticing that the more I work with graphite pencils, the more comfortable I’m getting with using them. I can’t say for sure if graphite is the only medium I’ll stick to, but we’ll see.
le fleur artsy 