Loosening up with Squash and Leeks

After spending two days working in very controlled media I needed to work in a much looser way to prevent my work getting "tight". I arranged a couple of squashes in various positions and at different heights. I abandoned the marrow early on but would have preferred to have three or even five squashes to play with- I might buy some more next shopping trip. With only two items there were a limited number of arrangements possible, and I decided that the best approach would be to show an interesting cast shadow and reflected light.

I worked in Copic marker on bleedproof A3 paper, selecting a square frame to best fit the subject. As marker ink takes a few minutes to dry I needed to add some adjustments to the shadows after I had reached what I considered to be a finished stage. In my sketchbook thumbnail I had used a graduation in the background to contrast with the light and dark edges of the fruit, however having laid in the overall blue-violet colour I found it had the right hue and tone without further layers.

I also felt that I had achieved a quite painterly effect with the layered strokes of ink. While I initially struggled with these permanent markers I'm finding I use them increasingly, although they do bleed alarmingly through cartridge paper and I now use a sheet of acetate under the sketchbook page to prevent other pages being stained- a device which has also proved useful to prevent transfer of soft pencil and graphite marks between pages- the acetate doesn't pick up residue, is thick enough to withstand a fair amount of pencil pressure, and can also be used to rest my hand on on the surface where it doesn't block part of the drawing from view which a scrap piece of paper would.

I then changed to ordinary water-soluble markers and did a quick study of some leeks- time was going on and they were destined for our dinner, so I wanted to draw them at least once. I used an olive and a gray-blue colour, the olive was nearly running out which gave some interesting results in the shading!

I liked the overlapping shapes and was sorry I didn't have enough time to do more work with them, this five minute sketch was all I could manage.