Prepare a Vegetable Still Life

For our first project next week, we will work on a still life of vegetables. I'd like you to prepare this week:

Collect 3 to 5 vegetables with interesting shapes. You can use all the same shapes, or a variety - whatever grabs your fancy. Choose veggies that won't wilt unless you want to replace them several times.
Set up your still life someplace where it can sit for a while without being moved, preferably with a blank background behind it. Arrange it anyway you want. Ideally, your still life will have some form of natural light or a good lamp nearby. The light source doesn’t have to shine directly on the center of your objects. Light coming from one side can make for an interesting sketch too.
Make at least one blind contour drawing of your arrangement before next Tuesday's class. You might want to do several, rearranging the veggies each time to try different compositions. (For a review of blind contour see the Review post)

A blind contour line drawing is a good warm up, to bypass L-brain idea of "how to draw vegetables" and go to R-brain seeing the shapes and curves.

On Tuesday, September 8th, we will discuss composition more and work on a rough draft like my squash drawing here:

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Drawing is a process that is intertwined with seeing. To draw, you need to see the way an artist sees. How to see like an artist is a hard thing to explain, so most people never learn the skill-- but it is learnable by anyone, with practice. Seeing like an artist involves shifting from the verbal/logical use of your brain to the visual/intuitive side. When you use the right side of your brain, you will enter that state where you can't access words, awareness of time disappears, yet you feel alert, relaxed, and happy. And then you will also begin to see things the way artists do. Vase-Face Drawing: This exercise is one way to practice the shift from left to right brain. Using pencil, draw a symbol of a profile of a face- the left brain can easily draw a symbol from memory. Begin on the left side of your paper, so the face is facing to the right. (If you are left-handed, reverse it). Start at the top of the head, and use one uninterrupted line. Make the face approximately 5" ...

Art with Cynthia

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