Onion – Still life Drawing Number Thirty-eight

Charcoal and white conte

This one was done with the onion sitting on a white napkin. For some reason, I seem to struggle with seeing the values right when I draw something on a white cloth, and this one was no exception.

I have a feeling that it’s because my brain is telling me “white” when my eyes are seeing dark grey, and also because the reflected light in the shadows is much more obvious, and I have a strong tendency to overstate it and lose the overall balance of the tones.

At the end of this one, I had a light crisscrossing of lighter tones running through the shadow at the back, spoiling the feeling of shadow. To fix it, I (rather heavy-handedly) went back in and re-stated the shadow darker.

It did help the drawing overall. The diagonal of the shadow helps to show the direction of the light, which in turn makes more sense of the shadows and highlights on the onion. Not very happy with this one though.

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