It’s been way too long since I’ve done any drawing. I did do a sketch this summer and have been to my neighborhood sketching group here and there, when it’s been warm enough to meet outside. But none of that really counts.

I started a picture two years ago. I’m not sure it’s a subject I would choose to draw now, but it made re-entry to the world of pastels easier to have something to work on.

Here’s how it looked in February, 2019, the first two images from the 16th, the third from the 17th:

I worked on it for a couple of days last week and it currently looks like this:

Observations:

• It’s hard making raspberries look like raspberries rather than tomatoes.
• In order to banish tomato-ism, each node of the raspberries must be drawn as separate objects.
• Whipped cream is really hard to make read as whipped cream. It will take the same attention as the raspberries, really analyzing the colors on each section.
• I.e., for the whole thing, slow down, be patient, pay attention. Why do I have to keep telling myself this????

The big question is, when it’s done, will it have the things I want in everything I draw: depth and volume you can really feel; color that is gorgeous on its own, so that each inch could be a beautiful abstract when you zoom in; texture, which using pastel without smoothing with a finger or brush gives pretty much automatically if you get enough on the paper; and reading correctly, looking like what it is without distracting inaccuracies such as wobbly ellipses.

None of these are quite there, lots of work to do.

Stay tuned. Hopefully it won’t be years before I have further developments.