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: