Exercise: Using hatching to create tone

Here, I experimented first with different media when drawing pieces of fruit. 

Hatching with felt-tip pens

I used the simple techniques of hatching, leaving more gaps for reflected light on its surface and less gaps for shadow, creating its form. Hatching made it quite easy to blend the tones of green for dark to light, which obviously cannot be achieved with just one colour with pen! The black outline actually worked quite well this time with the felt-tip pens to enclose it.

Wax crayons for the orange

The black outer line on this orange looks ridiculous! So ignoring that, the texture of the orange works quite well with the wax crayons. I had to use a lot of different shades of crayon for this to create the best natural look.

Coloured pencils for the banana and apple

I am really pleased with the tone effects of the coloured pencils in creating the banana. The stippling of the brown worked really well, using on/off pressure techniques and careful blending of brown to yellows and creams I could create a more natural looking banana. Softer hatching made it much less noticeable than with the pens. Making a few directional lines more prominent in hatching also helps to create form. The apple took a lot of work with all the blending of colour, the use of lines, toning and using a lot of different colours, ranging from yellow to red and green! Layering for the shadow didn't work very well so I should have applied the darker tones first. 

I then created a few sketches of compositions for my final drawing using the orange, banana and apples.  

Experimenting with different coloured media, drawing fruit

In my final piece below, I chose coloured pencil for the medium and a spaced out composition. The coloured pencils worked really well in hatching and blending all the colours, especially on the apples. I found it hard to choose suitable colours for the shadows on the pieces of fruit, however. So I ended up blending the main colours of the fruits with dark brown tones, which worked quite well, though not as convincing as I would have liked. 

Again, I'm really pleased with the banana, but this may because it had no shadows on it! I like the grooves and shape of the orange, by adding the dark browns against the light yellows, it has made the bulges of shape really show well on top of the orange. Because of my limited pallet of colours, the green apple looks a little too false. So my next job is to purchase a better selection of coloured pencils!

I think the shadows are my weakest points of these drawings as the form is not as apparent. Though, the highlights of light against the tones of colour have helped. But maybe more light/dark contrast would have made it more interesting?

I like the composition of slight overlap. Each piece of fruit looks naturally placed, as using four pieces is a hard number to create an interesting composition without looking too symmetrical! But the banana works well in closing off the other pieces of fruit, stopping the eye drifting off the page.

Fruit composition using coloured pencils