Drawing a Still Life in Colored Pencil
with Barbara Silbert

1. SET UP YOUR STILL LIFE (SAME AS LAST SESSION)

Set up your objects on a tablecloth, and find another cloth to prop up behind it & tape to a wall or a large board.

RE-DRAW your still life as before but on a smooth paper like Bristol or a colored pencil pad. Use a med. blue to draw with (Prismacolor best)

Note: don’t color over your pencil drawing with colored pencils – it won’t work. 

2. SHADING

Begin by lightly shading the blue cloth first, using the side of your sharpened colored pencil and try to get an even tone. Then add the medium blue and then midnight blue shadows. 

Start shading the pears by using a light coral for the highlights, leaving some white of the paper. Then use a red-orange for the mid-tones, and add some dark umber (brown) to the red for the left side that’s in shadow. 

3. COLOR

Put the stems in with a yellow green, noting the light side of stem on right, and make a bit darker on top and left side. 

For the tarnished copper bowl, use a light blue for the inside, noting how it gets darker on the inside right. Add some orange where indicated, then dark gray around it and mesh one color into another softly with your pencil point. You cannot blend colored pencil with your finger or a paper stub. Remember to leave white highlights where you see them.

4. BACKGROUND & SHADOW

Finish the dark background with the darkest blue, adding only a bit of black, and perhaps some dark red as well. 

Don’t forget shadows under the bowl and pears, and note how beautiful the pears look against a dark background!

Happy Drawing, Barbara 

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About Barbara Silbert:

  Barbara Silbert’s work has been acknowledged with more than 50 awards in various venues. She has taught Pastel Portraiture at the Nassau County Museum of Art and is presently teaching at The Art Guild and Great Neck’s school of Community Education at Cumberland. Silbert has taught adults, children, teens and seniors locally for the past 15 years. 

“Passing along what I have learned gives me the greatest pleasure of all.”

Prompts inspired by BE HAPPY! Art that makes you smile

Show us what you are grateful for, inspires you, lifts your soul, and makes you smile.

Health

Everyday items

Color

Memories

Rainbows

Sunsets

Solitude

Nature

Family

New traditions

Music

Animals

Prayer

Want to enter the competition? CLICK HERE for more information. 

BE HAPPY Awards $300 f(1st place), $200 (2nd place), $100 (3rd place)

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About The Art Guild:

The Art Guild offers classes and workshops for children and adults year-round. The gallery was voted Best Art School in 2018 and 2019 and Best Art Gallery 2017, 2018 and 2019 in Blank Slate Media’s annual competition. The Art Guild of Port Washington, Inc. is conveniently located at ElderfieldsPreserve, 200 Port Washington Blvd., Manhasset, New York. The Art Guild is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization providing encouragement, education and a forum for the appreciation of the visual arts. 

Drawing a Still Life 
with Barbara Silbert

1. SET UP

Set up your objects on a tablecloth, and find another cloth to prop up behind it & tape to a wall or a large board.

2. SHADING

Find the tallest item first and mark the top and bottom of it, then the others. 

Draw a line down the middle of each item, noting if they have an angle or are straight. (see which red lines are straight and which are angled) 

Then draw the curves on each side of the red line, making sure the curves on the bowl are equidistant from the center red line; the curves of the pears may be a bit different, or non-symmetrical and one side may be fatter than the other. 

Look at the flattish ovals that form the top, bottom, and plate of the bowl. The oval of the plate drops behind the bowl & you just see the front of the plate. There’s a smaller oval at the very bottom of bowl.

3. SHADING

Using a 6B sharpened pencil, hold it on the flat side and shade the darkest part of the bowl & pears, using more pressure to get it darker. Then do the same with the mid-tones, and leave the paper white for the lightest tones, or highlights.

4. TABLECLOTH

Draw fold lines on the angles you see, then shade between them.

Next week we will use colored pencils to work on the same still life.

Happy Drawing, Barbara 

_______________________

About Barbara Silbert:

  Barbara Silbert’s work has been acknowledged with more than 50 awards in various venues. She has taught Pastel Portraiture at the Nassau County Museum of Art and is presently teaching at The Art Guild and Great Neck’s school of Community Education at Cumberland. Silbert has taught adults, children, teens and seniors locally for the past 15 years. 

“Passing along what I have learned gives me the greatest pleasure of all.”