How to Draw a Still Life with Colored Conte Crayons

Drawing still life can result in decorative, pleasing artworks that do qualify as fine art. Creating your original still life with objects that are easy to draw and rendering them in colored Conte crayon will let you take as long as you need to get the shadows, colors, highlights and composition right.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• A wirebound, hardbound or tape bound sketchbook with good acid free drawing paper.
• A set of colored Conte crayons 12, 24 or 48 Assorted
• A piece of cardboard with a rectangular hole cut in it that's 3" x 4" for a viewfinder
• A kneaded eraser (putty eraser)
• Optional tortillons or stumps or cotton swabs
• Simple still life objects such as fruit, vegetables, plain bowls or plain vases
• A tablecloth or piece of plain cloth
• A stool or table to set up your still life on
• A damp washcloth
• A dry towel
• Facial tissue or soft rag
• A can of Workable Matte Fixative (Krylon, Blick or other)

1. 
   Photo reference of a still life for this demonstration

   Arrange your still life either next to a sunny window or under a lamp that's off to one side. Put the plain colored tablecloth on the surface you're using (it can be a white sheet, it's there to eliminate having to draw woodgrain and other details) and set out your fruits, vegetables and other objects. Directional lighting makes interesting shadows, and these help your drawing look more three-dimensional. So make sure the light is coming from above and to one side or the other when you set up your models.
   
   What makes some shadows interesting and others not? Shadows of glass bottles and jars have interesting little highlights inside them where the light gets focused as if by a lens, those are beautiful in a still life. Shadows also reflect a little of the color of what's casting them, a red tomato may have a pinkish haze in the shadow that makes it cool. Shadows can have hard edges that define them precisely or soft fuzzy edges that fade out. All of these types of shadows can make your art look better.
   
   Keep your first arrangements simple with only two or three objects at once. It's better to do multiple drawings of simple still lifes first before attempting something as complicated as a whole basket of apples with several bottles of wine that have labels on them, or a dozen different vegetables on a butcher's block with some of them chopped.
   
   Pick for bright colors and interesting shapes. Dark grapes and plums have a dark color with a soft bluish highlight that can make them look very realistic if you draw it in. Apples and cherries shine and have bright highlights besides their color. Tomatoes are easy to draw, and peaches have beautiful shading between yellow and pinkish-orange. So pick favorites.
   
   Since this is for you, set up arrangements of fruits you actually like eating -- and don't slice anything. The details and textures of wet sliced fruit and vegetables are a more advanced project, though they can be gorgeous. Wax fruit and artificial flowers are fine in a still life arrangement as long as they look realistic. They have the advantage they won't discolor or fade if it takes you a long time to do your drawings.
   
   Use the cardboard viewfinder to decide which way you're going to draw it, horizontal or vertical. Keep rearranging it until your view through the viewfinder looks like what you want your art to look like. Take a digital photo so that if anyone moves anything before you finish, you know where to put it back to keep going.

2. 
   Contour drawing stage

   Using the local color of the object, lightly sketch outlines of everything in your still life. Be sure to leave at least an inch or so between your drawing and the edges of the paper, so that when it's matted you don't lose part of your drawing under the mat. Use a light blue or light blue-gray for outlining the shadows. This is a contour drawing just to establish where everything is. Try to get the proportions right in relation to each other -- if the fruits or vegetables are different sizes, draw one first and then look at the one next to it to see how much larger it is. Draw the outlines of the foreground objects first. Use the corner of your colored Conte crayon to get a fairly thin line for these outlines, and sketch lightly. You can always change it later with your kneaded eraser.

3. 
   Colors blocked in stage, some shading

   Block in the main shapes and colors. You can wear down the edge of the sticks till they're blunt, or break off a piece and turn it on its side for these fill-ins. Work loosely. Smudge with your fingers, a tissue or chamois to get the most solid colors in the shadows, fading toward white highlights. Don't draw solidly over the whole thing, leave white highlights on everything whether it's shiny or not. We will work into those later if it's not shiny. Fill in the shadows with light blue or pale grey, and if you use gray, dash a little light blue into it and smudge. Where reflected color comes into a shadow smudge some of that color into the shadow.

4. 
   Shadowing and highlights

   Look at your objects and squint. Blur your eyes to see where the bright light areas are. Go in with a lighter related color and highlight the objects, still using bold strokes. Smudge in your highlights too. Yellow can highlight into light green, or green, yellow can also blend into reds and oranges to highlight them. Dark purple or blue may do better getting highlighted with light blue or white. While doing this, work a little more closely and add details like stems and pips. On a banana, this is where to take brown and get a little of it onto your finger, then blend it into the yellow for the shadowed areas of the banana. Then sketch in the lines if they're browning or any spots or brown patches with the brown stick.
   
   You can mix colors easily with colored Conte crayons. Scribble lightly with both colors and blend vigorously with your chamois, tissue or fingertip. You can also use cardboard blenders like tortillons (one-ended cardboard blender) or stumps (double ended cardboard blenders that can be sharpened in a pencil sharpener) to blend in areas of small detail, or to add soft small details by rubbing it on an area of the darker color you're dabbing in and then drawing with it. Cotton swabs are blunter, but these can also be used for blending and sketching.
   
   Experiment with different tools and techniques.

5. 
   Finished still life in colored Conte crayon

   Darken the shadows. Detail everything using the corners of your sticks, and correct any mistakes. Use the kneaded eraser to lift as much color as possible from areas you want to lighten -- squish it into the shape of the area you want to clean, then press firmly and peel off. Stretch, squish and repeat until it's as light as you want it, then draw over it with a lighter color.
   
   You can smooth out your strokes and try to keep precise edges to color areas, or let them blur and do scribbled marks over the blended areas. You can do strong painterly strokes like Van Gogh where they follow the curves of the object and help give a sense of roundness, or keep them parallel and shade by doing short zigzags all at the same angle.
   
   Experiment with different ways of drawing the same still life until you have the version you like best. At the end, I decided to add a simplified version of the background of the photo, scribbling and smudging wood paneling texture behind the edge of the table and continuing it where the photo has the wall with pictures on it. You can decide to do something like that at any time to improve the picture. Or do more than one version!
   
   As you finish each one, give it one or two light coats of Krylon spray fixative. Notice that this does slightly darken what you're doing, so if you want, you can touch up the highlights after the fixative spray with the same light colors. Sign each drawing and date it, when you have one you want to remove and frame, hang it proudly!
   
   Still lifes are a great accent for many traditional decor schemes, adding color and a sense of warm personality to your space. They are also good exercises for realistically drawing more complicated subjects like people, pets, and wildlife. Have fun! The joy of using Conte crayons for these drawings is that they won't let you get lost in obsessive little details, and create dramatic effects fast!

Tips & Warnings

• Try drawing your still life in monochrome black, brown or dark blue for a different style. If you draw it first in monochrome for a value study, it's easier to identify the darks and lights in your color drawing.
• Try using just two colors that are opposites on the color wheel, like dark blue and golden-orange, or dark green and red. As you blend them, you'll get many interesting color variations.
• Mix browns and grays by mixing complementary color pairs: red with green, orange with blue, yellow with purple.
• Clean your hands between color areas, especially if you're finger smudging. Don't create unwanted neutrals by bringing green zucchini powder into your red tomato's shadows.
• Don't overwork a drawing. If you don't like it, turn the page and start over.

Resources

• Dick Blick sells colored Conte crayons
• DeviantART is a place you can show off your finished still lifes

[rickmac]

on 4/4/2009 This is a very high quality article. I paint in oils and acrylics, but Conte Crayons sound fun. 5* and a rec.