The Pear

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Challenge 1: Seeing Light and Shade.

Replace the pear in your still life with this planed pear. Using a black marker pen draw the pear on paper in just black and white areas, separating the light from the dark. Remember the half tone (the area between light and shadow) belongs to the light. Include the cast shadow in your drawing. Squint at your pear to help you see the large masses. When we are painting later on we will be looking first for the light and shade areas in this way. You will notice that the black base is part of the light family except where a shadow is cast upon it. The brown background is in shadow so it too becomes part of the shadow family. Now you should have something that looks like this..

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Challenge 4 : The 10 Minute Challenge.

This exercise helps you to learn to see and paint the large colour masses and to simplify your brushwork. (It can also cause fits of despair and hopelessness and short but sweet moments of absolute clarity). Using the same setup and colours divide a 10x10" canvas (or similar) into 4 quarters and give yourself just 10 minutes to paint the pear in the top left quarter. Use a timer. Stop as soon as 10 minutes is up. (No cheating!) Next, change something about the colour arrangement in your scene and give yourself another 10 minutes to paint it again in the top right quarter. Repeat in the bottom left and bottom right.

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Challenge 3 : Seeing Colour Differences.

Replace the planed pear with the normal pear and paint a 6x6" colour study using an extended primary palette of Pthalo Green, Pthalo Blue, Cadmium Red Light, Cadmium Yellow Light and Titanium White. Again use a fairly large brush and try to segment the pear in your painting into large planes of separate colour as in the previous challenge. Make sure every plane is a different colour. You may soften edges between planes but do NOT paint large blends. Start with your darkest dark and lightest light. When you're trying to see colour differences between planes it's better to defocus your eyes rather than squinting because squinting darkens all the colours. Closing one eye helps too.

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Challenge 2 : Seeing Value Planes.

Using the planed pear, paint a value study using only black and white paint on a 6x6" canvas. Feel free to mix your own black with Ultramarine Blue + Burnt Sienna, or Pthalo Green + Cadmium Red or something similar. Use a fairly large brush so you don't get carried away with detail. You should just be trying to capture the individual value of each plane in correct relationship with the planes next to it. Keep squinting! Use a colour isolator if you wish to help judge relative values. Now you should have something like this...

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Challenge 1: Seeing Light and Shade.

Replace the pear in your still life with this planed pear. Using a black marker pen draw the pear on paper in just black and white areas, separating the light from the dark. Remember the half tone (the area between light and shadow) belongs to the light. Include the cast shadow in your drawing. Squint at your pear to help you see the large masses. When we are painting later on we will be looking first for the light and shade areas in this way. You will notice that the black base is part of the light family except where a shadow is cast upon it. The brown background is in shadow so it too becomes part of the shadow family. Now you should have something that looks like this..

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Here's how I set mine up - pretty simple. Note the card over the top which is casting a shadow onto the background. The pear is placed just forward of this cast shadow so that it is in full light contrasted against the darker background.