Yesterday I started a new focused practice project of improving my sketching skills by drawing an egg with a couple of different lighting angles. Today I chose a couple of small objects — a broken clothes pin and a large binder clip.

I definitely enjoyed sketching the egg more than today’s objects. Although today’s were much more challenging with the different angles and straight edges. The shadow shapes were far less interesting today, which is part of the reason I didn’t enjoy sketching them. Things with more rounded or organic shapes seem to respond more interestingly to light.

I also tried swapping my blade-sharpened 2B drawing pencil with a yellow HB school-style pencil sharpened the same way. Since the lines were a lot lighter, I dulled the point really quickly, and at this small scale the details (primarily on the shiny, reflective metal) got lost. But on the plus side, being too lazy to get up and sharpen it prompted me to stop fussing and move on to the next step.