Today my goal was to simplify my value marks so the sketch stayed more in the sketching realm than the finished drawing realm. But I got sloppy (hurried?) with my proportions and the pears on the left aren’t very accurate to real life. The stems are closer to reality than yesterday though.

I found myself adding deeper values even though my intention was to just to two values: in shadow and not in shadow. It was just too hard to stop once I went down that path!

I’m still feeling out hatching vs. smoothly-shaded tones. On the left I mainly used hatching and on the right did the smooth tones (side of the pencil). I thought hatching would be faster and looser, but so far that hasn’t really been the case. I do like the hatching in my first pear in this series of studies, where it’s a combination of the side of the pencil and the tip. That contrast looks lively to me.

I’m also noticing that once a second subject is added to the still life, it’s much harder for me to find those proportional relationships. Maybe tomorrow I’ll try finding the overall shape of the composition and then locating the individual forms within it.