Bowl of Dates – a Still Life Value Drawing

This drawing was my first attempt at a value study in black and white chalk. The chalk is mixed together in layers. Whilst it takes a very long time (and a lot of patience) to produce a drawing this way, the method does give you exceptionally fine control of the values.

This was also the first of the still life value studies which I used a Munsell value scale to help me translate the values I saw into the range I could reach with my materials – considerably more narrow. You can read about how using the Munsell value scale helped me understand value in drawing and painting much better here.