Tutti Frutti textures

I jumped slightly ahead in the coursework in order to do this still life with a range of interesting fruit, due mainly because I have limited time to work usually and I know working with coloured pencil is time-consuming. For the same reason I didn't spend time drawing thumbnails but made the compositional decisions quickly in my head- which did eventually lead to areas which didn't work effectively.

The piece took about eight hours in total because of the need to build up colour in layers. While I was pleased with the overall result, there are some noticeable issues.

The backgound was too bland so I drew in the shape of the kitchen hatch behind, only to realise that closed doors would seriously affect the lighting, so converted them to a window, which should have had much stronger tonal contrast with the bright light. The wall also needed to be darker, especially under the window and to define the edge of the table. Also the piece of ginger has a shadow thrown by the watermelon across it which has got rather lost as I struggled to blend a convincing overall colour on the surface. There is quite a lot of white still visible in the shadow- the cartridge paper I used has a more pronounced surface than my usual choice and without blending or stumping the entire area I couldn't get the pigment far enough into the paper, and I chose not to stump as I felt it would become rather flat and overworked.

I felt the more sucessful areas were the highlight on the watermelon and the texture of the Galia melon- for this I used a series of random marks in two tones to suggest rather than define the cracked surface. I alo felt that the pink grapefruit flesh was moderately successful in indicating the juicy cut surface although I would have liked to retain more small sharp highlights where the light glinted across the surface.