Exercise Using hatching to create tone
I started with a pencil sketch of some lemons. Using a soft pencil and very small strokes I tried to look closely at every aspect of the surface of each object.
I tried to concentrate on hatching and cross hatching rather than blending but this isn’t a natural way of drawing for me. I tend to work in very small detail rather than obvious hatching.
I then moved to colour pencil, which I kept very sharp and focused mainly on the hatching technique.
I choose a pear and a banana for my first two sketches. The pear shows larger hatching marks but doesn’t necessarily follow the contours of the surface. It gives a very sketchy effect. The banana has a little more detail and I think reflects the depth and shadows a little better.
This drawing on the right of an apple was done in colour pencil. I tried hard to follow the contours of the rounded shape and respect the darker shades and highlights. I maybe should have added some cast shadow.
I also tried a couple of sketches using colour pencils with water but disappointingly the paper wasn’t very good at helping the ink to run.
It was good experience but not a good result.
Exercise Using markers or dip pens
I really enjoyed experimenting with marker pens. I liked the medium and creating something more graphic and stylised. The first sketch of pink grapefruit is simple but quite effective. I discovered though that the paper makes a huge difference. On absorbent drawing paper the pens flooded and bled leaving lots of stroke marks. I tried several different papers whilst experimenting with marker pens.
I then tried a bunch of bananas and put a black contrast background to highlight the fruit. I only had a small colour selection of pens but tried to create tone and shading with colour, adding some green to the bananas. I also added some fine black detail to enhance the drawing.
This last drawing on the right was made with felt-tip pens and water. It was my first experiment with this medium and can be quite tricky to use. Unfortunately, I used low quality drawing paper which absorb the water and made it difficult to spread the colours in a controlled manner.
Looking back at these drawings, I am beginning to like close up, heavily cropped images as they have more impact and seem to be more dynamic.
Exercise Drawing using oil pastel
This oil pastel drawing took a long time in several sessions. I worked from dark to light blocking in the defined colours first.
The quality of the oil pastel wasn’t great as they are virtually the cheapest on the market and proved to be quite crumbly and soft.
The thing I struggle with in oil pastels is detail and building up layers. Details prove to be difficult because of the thick rounded ends. I tried shaving the pastels into a point but they crumbled at the slightest pressure. Layers were challenging because the pastels created a thick skin even if I tried to build layers lightly with hardly any pressure.
This drawing above lacks both detail and some shading, especially on the bananas. The Lichee lack depth and appear incorrect in form and the banana on the left is completely the wrong shape.
Research Point
Artist biography
Nicholson was born in Denham, Buckinghamshire, and was the son of the artists William Nicholson and Mabel Pryde. He studied at the Slade School of Art, 1910-11. He spent 1912 to 1914 in France and Italy, and was in the United States in 1917-18. He married the artist Winifred Roberts in 1920. Over the next three years they spent winters in Lugano, Switzerland, then divided their time between London and Cumberland. In 1931, Nicholson’s relationship with the sculptor Barbara Hepworth resulted in the breakdown of his marriage to Winifred. He and Hepworth married in 1938 and divorced in 1951. Nicholson lived in London from 1932 to 1939, making several trips to Paris in 1932-3, visiting the studios of Picasso, Braque, Arp, Brancusi and Mondrian. From 1939 to 1958 he lived and worked in Cornwall, before moving to Switzerland. He returned to London in 1974.
Nicholson’s earliest paintings were still lifes influenced by those of his father. In the 1920s he began painting figurative and abstract works inspired by Post Impressionism and Cubism. He produced his first geometric and abstract reliefs in 1933. He first exhibited in 1919, at the Grosvenor Gallery and Grafton Galleries. His first one-man show was held at the Twenty-one Gallery, London in 1924. From 1924 to 1935 he was a member of the Seven and Five Society, and in 1933 he joined Unit One, founded by Paul Nash. In 1937 Nicholson, Naum Gabo and the architect Leslie Martin edited Circle: International Survey of Constructive Art. Circle identified Nicholson with a group of like-minded artists and architects who wanted to apply ‘constructivist’ principles to public and private art, advocating mathematical precision, clean lines and an absence of ornament.
In 1952 Nicholson won first prize at the Carnegie International, Pittsburgh. He was awarded the first Guggenheim International painting prize in 1956, and the international prize for painting at the Sao Paulo Bienal in 1957. He received the Order of Merit in 1968. Numerous retrospective exhibitions of his work have been held, including shows at the Venice Biennale and Tate Gallery in 1954-5, Kunsthalle, Berne in 1961, Museum of Fine Arts, Dallas in 1964, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo in 1978, and Tate Gallery in 1993-4. Helped by wide international exposure in British Council tours during the 1940s and 1950s and by the championing of the writer Herbert Read, Nicholson’s work came to be seen, with Henry Moore’s, as the quintessence of British modernism.
Check & log
Your composition should occupy most of the paper’s surface. How much negative space do you have left?
My drawings for this part of the course vary in composition. The first sketches in pencil are single fruit without much thought of where on the page or composition. I wanted to practice technique rather than a full still life composition. The markers drawings have very little negative space as they are cropped tightly.
What have you learned from drawing the details of fruit and vegetables?
It is a long, laborious exercise if you want reflect the surface of the fruit correctly and add each detail of surface texture and shading.
What did you find challenging about this part of the course?
Time, I struggled to find the time to work in such a detailed manner. Using new materials such as oil pastels. It takes time to adjust to new materials and needs a lots of experimentation.
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