More Shades of Grey!

Creative Sketch Book, Module 1

Chapter 3,
Activity 3.2

Make a composition in monochrome using a photograph.

Given the problems I had creating greys, this was never going to be an easy task, and things just seemed to go from bad to worse. I selected a photo of little plum tomatoes, taken in Birmingham Market, because out of the various photos I took (the stallholders thought I was nuts) this had the best highlights, and simple shapes. I marked off a section which had a clear definition between light and dark, and traced it into my sketchbook, and tried painting it, with disastrous results. I couldn’t get a colour I was happy with, and I couldn’t get it pale enough, and the white wax crayon I used on the areas of light didn’t act as a ‘resist’ at all, so I tried painting around them, and everything went patchy, instead of being shaded…

And at this point I lost my confidence completely, and was so demoralised that I nearly gave up altogether, so I abandoned this chapter for the moment, otherwise I shall never get anything else done. But I will go back to it later.

 Having said that, it was interesting, especially after using blocks of colour in previous chapters. And I begin to see how using light and shade can make pictures appear three-dimensional.