Let's Draw a Pear!

Pear

colored pencil on Rising Museum Board

5 x 7 inches

©Ann Thompson Nemcosky

I am trying something new on my blog. I have put together a tutorial for doing a colored pencil drawing of a pear and will be posting the steps throughout the next week. I invite you all to not only follow along, but if you would like to give the drawing a try yourself, please let me know in the comments with a link to where you are posting your results. I would love to follow along with your progress too!

Also, if you would prefer to work from a paper copy of the tutorial you can visit my Tutorial page here on this blog and follow the links to a free PDF file that you may download for yourself.

Today I will begin with the Introduction and steps 1 and 2, just to get you started. Have fun!

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 There are as many different ways to draw with colored pencil as there are colored pencil artists. Drawing still life objects is always a popular subject and one which lends itself well to the medium of colored pencil.

In this tutorial you will see the process that I follow for drawing a still life subject in colored pencil, from setting up and photographing the subject to the finished drawing.

The steps outlined here for drawing this pear are

•   Taking a good photo reference of the pear 
•   Adjusting the photo and creating the composition in Photoshop
•  A list of materials used to make this drawing
• Transferring the image to the drawing surface
• Applying colored pencil in layers to create form and depth of color
• Using a kneaded eraser as a drawing tool to create texture
• Putting the final touches on the drawing

Step One : Taking a good photo reference of the pear

Here is my usual set up for photographing still life objects. I use indirect, natural light coming in through our back door with a white painting board balanced on top of a small pedestal table. I place my still life object on the white board and photograph from many angles with the object(s) in various positions. I never use a flash for these photos as a flash will wash out the light and shadow. 

I have used black denim fabric when I want a dark background for my object but my preferred surface is this white laminate board. It reflects a bit of light and nicely catches the shadows from the objects.

Though I do have to be careful that my “assistant” doesn’t confuse my still life set up for his snack!

Step Two :  Adjusting the photo and creating the composition in Photoshop

This is how the photo I chose to use for my reference appeared straight out of the camera. I liked the position of the singular pear including the turn of the stem. I also saw that it had a good value range from light to dark, a nice distribution of color and interesting highlights and shadow.

 

Next,  I made my adjustments to the photo in Photoshop. First I cropped the photo to my desired 5 x 7 inch size, centering the pear within the format. I then used the auto levels and auto color functions.  I increased the saturation by 15, the brightness by 30, and the contrast by 15. I applied the unsharp mask with a setting of 50%, radius 1.0 and threshold 0. 

I printed out a copy to check the result. Because pictures always seem to print a little dark on my printer,  I went back and increased the brightness setting by 12 and printed out my reference again.  If all of these settings and numbers are unfamiliar or confusing, don’t worry. Basically, I cropped the image to its desired size, adjusted for contrast, increased the brightness and color saturation, and sharpened the image. All of that took my okay picture and created a very acceptable reference photo.

Below is the final reference photograph ready for you to print out and use for your drawing of the pear.

 Click on the photo to open a larger size. Hopefully it will print as a 5 x 7 inch photo for you!

Friday I will post steps 3 and 4. Stay tuned!