A few months ago, unexpectedly for myself, I suddenly decided to learn to draw, despite the fact that I have never done this. So I decided to sometimes take lessons from my artist friend. The first pictures were ... mmm, not very good, especially when I tried to paint with acrylics :) But I did not give up and decided to focus on pastels, dry and oily, and I started to get a little good. So now I already have a number of pictures to share, and a couple of those that turned out well (for me), my relatives even took away from me to hang them at home — of course, this is more as a sign of family feelings, but nevertheless it's nice 😅
Of course, if I had practiced more often, progress would have been faster, but so far I usually draw once a week, and in general I like this activity, especially when the result is at least a little nice. So today I want to take part in the Qurator's Art Walk — Art Competition with the subject of Still Life. My today's still life with a mug of beer :) Beer, barrel and hops — what else do you need for a good evening of drawing? 😄
The reference for my picture was this photo (taken from Pixabay, royalty free). Of course, I changed it a little - the beer mug obviously lacked a handle, and I decided not to bother at all with the spikelets in the background :)
I draw with the paper on the backing to reduce dust and pastel crumbs on the table. All the dry pastel colors used in this drawing, and a black pencil, I have laid out around — for clarity.
A little bit of the initial stage of creating a picture: first, I select a pastel. There are many colors and the palette can be expanded almost indefinitely, each brand has a variety of product lines by color, and one way or another, all of them may be needed. But collecting all the possible colors will still not work, so I work with what I have. It is not always possible to immediately select all the necessary colors, it also often turns out that during the drawing some of those that have already been selected are unnecessary — but this is a normal situation. On another, but also black paper, I try the colors.
When I have more or less decided on the palette, I make a quick sketch on plain paper with a pencil to imagine how the drawing will be located on the sheet, and then I start. I roughly sketch out the shape of the main objects. All inaccuracies and slightly curved lines will then be easily corrected.
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After the contours are completed, I start filling them with the color. And then I got so carried away that I forgot that I wanted to photograph everything at different stages. Sometimes I do it, sometimes I don't — it depends on the mood and the time. In general, after working with pastels, the result turned out like this, this is almost the final stage:
Then I just need to slightly correct the shape of the beer mug, clean up the borders of its handle, make the shape of the foam on the right more interesting and refine the hop cones. Something like this:
And a bit of backstage: while I was thinking whether I should correct something else in the picture, my cat put an end to this question. Left unattended for a long time, she came to my knees to purr and demand affection. So I had to wipe my hands off the pastels and follow her orders :)
Resolved! I'll leave it that way. In my opinion, it turned out quite lively.
By the way, this time I did not use an ordinary pastel paper — this was my first experience with sandpaper. It's very interesting! The colors are juicier and the sandpaper holds more layers than usual paper. I can also experiment with the type of sandpaper, may be I'll do it some other time :) Hope you enjoyed the picture!
