I really enjoyed drawing this mug and spoon task on the first assignment for the Coloured Pencil Course. It was really challenging at times to get the ellipses right so that the mug looked more realistic. It took me 2hrs 50 mins to draw and I was very pleased with the finished drawing. I spent a great deal longer on this task than I would have done, it was only your guidance on how long the drawing should take that encouraged me to take my time. I used Derwent Graphite pencils 2B, 4B and 6B with a 2H for highlights as well as leaving white spaces for anything brighter. For this picture I used a Pad of Strathmore Coloured Pencil Paper, 163 gsm and the size is between A4 and A3 – it’s 9” x 12”.
Having drawn the mug and spoon already it didn’t take me very long to do the basic outline I needed to do the coloured pencil version of my cup and spoon. This took me longer though, 3hrs and 15 mins, but I enjoyed trying to get the colours and highlights I wanted. I used the same paper as above and Prismacolour Pencils, but I found them to be hard work at times.
Blending wasn’t as easy as with graphite pencils and also, I wasn’t sure as to how much pressure I should apply to the drawing. I did use colours other than black for the shadowed areas and found that very useful, the results were much nicer than I had hoped for. I really need to be more aware of backgrounds and what I want to draw, when I’m setting my ‘scenes’ as this one had a lot of brown in it.
I had my cup and spoon on a small table beside me, the table was polished wood and the background is a deep mushroom coloured wall, and then of course I had selected a brown mug. I only became aware of this when I was half way through the coloured pencil version. So I’ll try to remember this when I set up future arrangements.
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