*Image credit goes to iStockphoto.*
It’s been a long while since I got back into doing art again, but my current job has been stressing me out badly to the point of taking days off. Plus, I’ve been trying to plan my trip to a seasonal job in the state of Maine and that involved getting vaccinated. All of this had me too tired to even get back to drawing, even when the day was nearly done.
For this piece, I started it back in late February and had planned on finishing it in mid-March. That didn’t happen and I put it off many times, but I managed to get this one done and ready for my in-progress portfolio.
I wanted to do another fruit as a subject, but instead of drawing exactly what my eyes saw, I decided to combine two images of the same fruit together into one unique artwork. The first photo of the peach was my base while the second one shown below was going to be for details and shading.
For the outline, I used my 4H pencil to draw out a grid to determine how big I wanted the subject to be. The pad I was drawing on was 11 x 17 inches, but I wasn’t ready to make a drawing that big yet, so that’s why I kept it small scale. I then sketched out the general shape of both the peach and the peach slice.
I combined the stem of the second peach photo with the leaf of the first peach photo. Since the slice of peach was in the second one, I added it in to compliment the main subject. I then started shading in the drawing, starting with the slice first. To be honest, that was the easiest part of the entire piece and I was pleased at how it turned out!
NOTE: The pencils used for shading were B, 2B, 3B and 4B. 4B was used more than 3B for the way darker areas.
I moved on to the leaf and stem before filling in the whole peach. That part was very difficult for me, even as I worked slowly, because what I was visualizing for the peach to look like wasn’t really coming out the way I wanted to on one side of it. The first half of it looked smooth and realistic, but the choppiness of the second half emerged because this was around the time the stress of everything outside of art was hitting me hard.
I got back to finishing it around the start of April and the more I filled in the darker areas, the better it looked and I was getting happier the more I worked on it.
Overall, despite the shape of the whole peach looking somewhat off, I’m happy with the results. The peach slice came out exactly the way I wanted and it looks so pleasing to my eyes! The leaf also looks pretty good too!
My next subject will probably be a vegetable, but I’m pushing that aside until I get to Maine and settle in before my seasonal job starts.
le fleur artsy 