• Chloe
      Participant
      Chirps: 5
      It was hard for me to find where the light and the dark spots were on the object, I found that it was easier to first take a photo of it, and that brought out some of the more obvious chiaroscuro. I am feeling more comfortable on putting the marks on pages, I am finding that I am more capable of doing these things than I think.
    • David
      Participant
      Chirps: 14
      AcornsTexturesLemonStipplePomHatchDefinitely getting a feel for which shading techniques work for me on which subjects.  Stippling on lemon worked well, I think.  I'm not so sure about cross-hatching on pomegranate, but maybe it works.
      • Victor
        Participant
        Chirps: 13
        The pomegranate looks good enough to eat! I love the way you use colour there. The shadow cast by the pomegranate is a bit rough and ready, but the fruit itself is stunning.  Love it! 
      • David
        Participant
        Chirps: 14

        @Victor Thank you!  Yeah, I'm not too happy with the shadow.  I think I should have blended it more ...

      • Kathryn
        Participant
        Chirps: 5
        Nice! These feel both personal and real. I'm inspired by how well the watercolor with pencil is working together.
      • David
        Participant
        Chirps: 14

        @Kathryn Thank you!  I'm still getting the feel for the watercolors and how they work with the pencil.  I've used watercolor pencils before, and colored pencils, but never watercolors with pencil drawings.  Fun to see how it all works together ...

    • glynda
      Participant
      Chirps: 3
      6DA03B9A-DE4D-4FE7-9B2A-EAF5B814F84F
    • Maidie
      Participant
      Chirps: 9
      This was also hard for me. But I did do a few drawings. 7V7w7gVHSfCFB+DP9LjczA_thumb_3463 I couldn't pull myself to try to add color to it. Then my grandson wanted me to draw his backpack, so I thought I'd try it. %Oy40VfXQgKHW6eIFf6hNA_thumb_3479 Next, my granddaughter wanted a drawing of a shell. IMG_6054 I'm enjoying really looking at the object.
    • Tom
      Participant
      Chirps: 20
      Gettin' down & dirty (ie, too much pencil, shading, color, etc!) Enjoyed the explanation of shadow (and learning that new, cool word "chiaroscuro") and I can see that this parameter--shading--will take a lot of practice yet will lead to drawings that I will come to enjoy more (the process and the end project). shading apple eraser
    • Nancy
      Participant
      Chirps: 23
      I really like the style in which Liz is instructing us. It’s early in this course, yet I feel like I’m learning so much! I’m sure everyone else agrees. I am ready to move on, but no doubt I’ll go back to the prior units for a refresher as needed. I’m s happy I took this course.
    • William
      Participant
      Chirps: 10
      I have not done any drawing or sketching in many years.  The lesson on drawing basics is helping me to remember just how much I have forgotten and how to look at the object.DSC_9440
    • Terri
      Participant
      Chirps: 6
      unnamed
      • Tom
        Participant
        Chirps: 20
        Great Citizen Sciencery!
    • Penny
      Participant
      Chirps: 4
      I wanted to try doing some shading last night while watching a movie. I was too lazy to get up to find an object and get a light, so I did this little bowl that sits on the end table next to my side of the sofa. Usually it has paper clips, some note cards, scissors, and other odds and ends in it, but my cat prefers it empty, so she had tossed everything out of it. The light source was the table lamp above it and I was looking down into the bowl. The highlights were mainly on the rim of the bowl which I didn't even come close to getting right and some on the right top side. It was fun though and after I finished I went looking for something more natural and found a seashell that I'm working on. The actual drawing is lighter, but I had to darken the copy up to scan it. Some of the image from the opposite page is showing through around the bowl making it look a bit messy.         bowldarksml
    • sondra
      Participant
      Chirps: 21
      51B61556-3C4E-4EAD-987A-CCC410E09848
    • Terri
      Participant
      Chirps: 6
      unnamed Having time for some sketching of the last of the fall flowers.  The gentians are some of my favorite in the prairie and are one of the last to bloom before the prairie goes dormant for the winter.  I love to draw and can't wait until I retire to do this full time.  I care more about capturing the essence of the flower and less about the exactness.   More the 'art' and less of the scientific illustration.
    • Deborah
      Participant
      Chirps: 21
      IMG_9442Light from  above spreads over the many surfaces of the apple causes multiple highlights and shadows. An apple is an imperfect sphere. Challenging. This apple is a yellow and pinkish red gala.
    • laurel
      Participant
      Chirps: 7
      I gathered some autumn detritus—acorns, maple seeds, black walnuts. Such bounty! I also raided the fridge for a carrot and found an onion. Shadows are tricky! I feel like this will take a lot of practice. 5F1A4FE6-D6A6-44DE-BED9-61C36FF3DC2F
    • Peggy
      Participant
      Chirps: 10
      B4DA8009-4B0F-4869-9A8D-1E0F623AC69E I did this exercise several times, trying various shading techniques.  I’ve always like stippling but it does some time and patience. Putting on some music helped and was actually relaxing. I found that put putting the objects on a white surface rather than a dark table made it easier to see the reflected light.
    • Valerie P Stevens
      Participant
      Chirps: 13
      I changed the light source for the pear and the apple.  Both had very reflective surfaces that were picking up a lot of light from the room that was lit by room lights.  This was a fun challenge, but next time I'll do it in the daylight.
    • Valerie P Stevens
      Participant
      Chirps: 13
      IMG_7371 copy 2
    • Christine
      Participant
      Chirps: 8
      The texture marks are really fun. I brought some berries inside and enjoyed giving them form and playing with the leaf textureimage
      • Heather
        Participant
        Chirps: 11
        Beautiful! I love how real those berries look.
      • Victor
        Participant
        Chirps: 13
        That is just lovely, the form is perfect but the shading is so subtle. Beautifully beautifully done.
    • Heather
      Participant
      Chirps: 11
      3A5ED53F-317E-44EE-9635-C9880092502C I’ve clearly got a lot more practicing to do! I wish I had waited on the water color because the 3rd version of this apple was the best, but I wanted to try out the color. I think I’ll stick to pencil for a while though. Anyhow I suppose I should focus on the fact that each attempt at sketching the apple felt a bit better, and I enjoined looking at it from different angles, and seeing how the highlights and shadows shifted.
      • Heather
        Participant
        Chirps: 11
        403D5FC7-200E-4CB6-AB9F-AF3DB4F57006 Also, my 4 year old has a “nature shelf” that she fills with “treasures” from our explorations outside. I had no idea when I set that up for her (mostly because I was tired if finding leaves and rocks all over the house) that it I would be making use of it for evening sketching when its too dark to go outside!
    • Amanda
      Participant
      Chirps: 3
      IMG_5277 I practiced stippling because it is intimidating to me and takes lots of patience!
      • Nancy
        Participant
        Chirps: 23
        Great work! 👍🏻🐚
      • Amy
        Participant
        Chirps: 3
        I too am intimidated by the stippling. This is really good!
      • Sharla
        Participant
        Chirps: 7
        Really, really nice!
      • Mary Jo
        Participant
        Chirps: 12
        Wow! Very nice!
    • Beth
      Participant
      Chirps: 6
      Chiaroscuro I like using scribbles to show texture and value. I thought the egg was going to be easy, but it was actually the most challenging. Eggs have such a perfect, smooth texture and it was hard to achieve that.
      • Christine
        Participant
        Chirps: 8
        I love the egg! The scribbles are the perfect texture for the carton. Nice drawings!
      • Heather
        Participant
        Chirps: 11
        I took a drawing class in college a million years ago. I remember we had to draw 5 white eggs on a white background without leaving any blank space on the page. It was so hard!
      • Morgan
        Participant
        Chirps: 4

        @Heather When I was an art student in the early 90s my professor made a still life out of random objects that were all painted white, and we had to draw them by taking charcoal and covering the entire page with black and then erasing the "drawing" out...it was very interesting and one of my favorite exercises I did in any art class.

      • Nancy
        Participant
        Chirps: 23
        Eggscellent! 🥚👍🏻
      • Debra
        Participant
        Chirps: 16
        Awesome sketches. They really "feel" 3 dimensional!
    • Donna
      Participant
      Chirps: 34
      This is a little more practice with lights and darks, it was done at dusk with over cast clouds so no highlights.  I wanted to capture the folding of the leaf and some of the grass around it.  I have never really intentionally gone outside to draw, so this is really new learning for me.  I finished the drawing inside since it got dark pretty quick tonight.Tgl7z9ck887nydmnjqtp6ehula3t9r4wk (2)rotated
    • Coral
      Participant
      Chirps: 10
      20191010_153257 This was a little different from the example Liz gave us because as you can see, my highlight was near the bottom of my apple and the sun was moving, so the highlight kept moving on the apple! By the time I actually finished the sketch, the highlight was at the top!  Ugh!   This sounds exactly like something that would happen to me out in the field. I'm feeling more comfortable putting marks on the page but I'm a little worried because when I get out in the field, there will be so many more variables to deal with and not the least of which will be wind and bird movement.
    • Aimee
      Participant
      Chirps: 10
      IMG_4930 I practiced a few of the mark making techniques using the same subject to see how different styles might lend themselves to different textures. I can now see what works better in the field too for quick capturing as the processes took longer to do the more detailed they got.
    • Alicia
      Participant
      Chirps: 23
      I was surprised with the results of the first exercise (Drawing basics) - for me it was much easier to get decent results when making a continuous line than with the sketchy lines.  I won't even pollute this forum with my sad drawings! :-) But for some reason the ginkgo leaf was always OK... How did everyone else do?
      • Catherine
        Participant
        Chirps: 7
        Same with me, Alicia, I also had a harder time with the sketchy lines. I need to slow down and practice these exercises some more before I move on to the next lesson. I was also surprised that I had trouble with the shadow when trying to draw an apple. My new resolution: when I want to eat an apple I have to draw it first!
      • Donna
        Participant
        Chirps: 34
        My single line drawings were awful but my sketchy line drawings were not too bad.  I went back and practice shading the acorn and it looks pretty cool.
      • Tom
        Participant
        Chirps: 20
        Me too, some of my single lines were better, too many strokes sometimes muddies things up. I do know from experience drawing moon craters while looking through a telescope that it gets better with repetition and also that it will take many, many times of doing something as simple as drawing an accurate oval (for the craters) that depicts what I'm looking at.
      • Lisa
        Participant
        Chirps: 13
        Same with me. My continuous lines were all better except for the acorn. I guess I'm used to drawing for my preschool students. I am definitely struggling with fill. BUT, I am enjoying it and trying to stay positive. Of course, the heavy rains have started here so I'll be drawing indoors a lot.
    • Sandy
      Participant
      Chirps: 32
      IMG_2592
      • Beth
        Participant
        Chirps: 6
        I love the texture and shading on this avocado!