Drinking Glass with Salt and Pepper Shakers -- Pencil

Sketching from real objects is harder I have found than  from photos or artwork. The latter usually has the shadows and composition there. When I draw from real objects, there are so many decisions to make, and it really stretches me to bring the 3D to 2D. The above objects, sketched for practice, are from my kitchen. The shapes of the objects are what caused me to draw them. They were fun to do.

Vase Still Life -- Pencil

This vase was drawn from a picture at a friends house. It was one of three beautifully textured vases. I just concentrated on this one. It made an interesting study in shadows and texture. Enjoyed sketching it.

Victorian House -- Pencil

I love to sketch architecture. Would love to do more of it. Whenever I am some where there is interesting architecture I just ache to sketch it. However, I usually don't have time to do it. Thus, I usually have to settle for pictures in books. However, a big benefit of sketching from pictures in books is that you can take all the time you need, and you are not in the heat or cold. The above is from a plain sketch I did a couple of years ago. I had previous had taken it and developed it in pen and ink and then even later as a watercolor. Until today, I had never taken it and developed it as a full blown sketch in pencil. This is based on a sketch I found in a watercolor book. I rearranged where some of the doors and windows were on the main part of the house to make it more appealing. The original did not have the bottom of the porch in the picture, so I put one on.

Tea Pot and Pears -- Pencil

This sketch was done from a picture in a book about how to do colored pencil art. I loved the contrast of shadows and light, as well as the reflections on the tea pot. The tablecloth was actually a plaid pattern in the original colored pencil drawing. I liked the contrast better with a white one. I liked the challenge of the picture. The style of the picture made it easy to concentrate on one object or thing at a time to build the picture up. It was a very satisfying piece of art to do.

Variegated Rose -- Pencil

 

This is one that I drew a couple of month ago.The original picture was of a pink and red rose.  All the different shades of pink, red, and shadows resulted in a rose with much more pencil in it than the first rose I did (see red rose here). Drawing it required a lot of thinking regarding how to represent all the different shades of pink, rose, light and shadows. With this rose I was also able to practice how to do the petal textures, which were not in the photo of the red rose I drew previously. This was really interesting to do.

Antique Colored Glass Bottle -- Pencil

Several months ago I fell in love with a photo of an aqua blue antique glass bottle. When I first saw it I wanted to paint it, but never had the nerve to try it. After I started this sketching blog I decided to give it a try in pencil. This sketch was done a couple of months ago. The original photo came from the Monthly Sketch Project (November 2009). Click  here to go to this blog. Enjoyed sketching this.

Two Pears Still Life -- Pencil

This is my first shaded pencil pear sketch. I have wanted to do some pears for a while, but could not find anything to sketch.  When I finally found some pears to sketch, I found I could not duplicate all the details into my picture. In the original oil painting there were a lot more highlights, but for some reason I could not get that many to work in my sketch.  Either the difference is in the medium, or the artist. Other than that, I had a lot of fun doing this sketch.  I got to stretch a lot, as I learned more about sketching fruit.  The inspiration for this came from the oil painting 'Pears' by Ann Thompson Nemcosky. You can see the original here. Her painting was so beautiful that it made me want to sketch it. I also asked and received her permission to post my sketch.