Ann Swan Botanical Artist - Limited Edition Prints and Greeting Cards.

Leisure Painter May 2002 'Let's Start with Art 29'
Draw a plum tomato with Ann Swan in coloured pencils

AIM OF DRAWING

To produce a colour pencil portrait of a single plum tomato — so realistic that you could pick it off the page and eat it!

MATERIALS USED

Paper: Any good quality acid-free, Hot Pressed (smooth) paper of at least 300gms. I always use Fabriano 5 HP 350gms reverse side.

Pencils: Ordinary graphite pencil (F or HB) for outline with a very long, sharp point. Propelling pencil with 0.3 HB lead.

Coloured Pencils: Any good quality coloured pencils either oil based or watercolour (but used dry). I have used a combination of Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils and Karisma colour.

Colours used for the tomato:
Warm dark grey IV	Scarlet red	Wine red
Purple	Vermillion	Crimson
White

Colours used for the bracts and stem:
Warm Dark Grey V	Cedar green	Deep Red
Dark Sepia	Apple green	White

Lyra Splender pencil for burnishing. This is a transparant wax pencil.Clean cotton buds for polishing

Plastic rubber for cleaning surrounding paper

KEY POINTS

Keep outline drawing simple and accurate to avoid muddying colours. Build up layers gradually. Layers can always be repeated later if you need extra depth of colour. For the final stages and burnishing, pressure needs to be increased in order to get the colours to blend smoothly together. Be careful when polishing not to go over the edges and smudge.

Keep the surrounding paper clean by leaning on another piece of paper whilst working. If you accidently colour in your highlights or want to create additional ones use some sticky-backed ‘Frisket’ film to remove the colour
carefully, Do not use a rubber as it will just rub the colour into the paper.

TECHNIQUES USED

Accurate line drawing with careful observation of shadows and highlights.

Layering — building up layers of dry colour using a sharp pencil with small elliptical strokes.

Burnishing — i.e. using a lighter colour to press heavily over underlying colours in order to blend them thoroughly and remove the grain of the paper.

Polishing — i.e. using a cotton bud or cotton wool pad lightly to polish the surface of the drawing to remove pencil marks.

TIME TAKEN

Between one and two hours

Figure One:

Step 1: With a fine-pointed F or HB pencil draw a faint outline of the tomato as accurately as possible. Try to avoid rubbing out as this can damage the surface of the paper and don’t press too heavily as this will leave indentations that can be picked up by the colour pencils later. If you are worried about drawing accurately do the drawing on another sheet and then trace it onto your final working paper once you are happy.

Step 2: Start shading the darker areas and reflected shadows with a warm grey V for the bracts and warm grey IV for the tomato, leaving the highlights white. This will to add depth to the final colours. Start gently as top layers will accentuate previous layers and you can always add more depth later. I have chosen not to use the complementary colour green for the shading on this occasion because the lovely translucent character of colour pencil can make the shading show through too harshly unless the tonal values are carefully balanced.

Figure Two:

Step 1: I have used the complementary colour, deep red, to deepen and enrich the shadows on the bracts.

Step 2: Shading on the tomato is deepened with FaberCastell wine red and deep red, still leaving the highlights white. The very dark areas under bracts are given added depth with Karisma purple.

Figure Three:

Step1: Start to build up layers of cedar green on the bracts giving more pressure over the darker areas.

Step 2: Use scarlet red quite heavily over most of tomato but keep the point sharp and aim to get rid of the grain of the paper so that you can begin blending the colours together. Lay colour very gently over highlights especially the main highlights.

Plum Tomato
9 x 5.7 cm

Please click on these images
to view a larger version

Figure Four:

Step 1: Now burnish quite heavily over bracts with Faber-Castell apple green to remove all traces of white and blend layers together.

Step 2: Vermillion or an oranges’ red (depending on the colour of your tomato) can he added quite heavily over the tomato to brighten lighter areas. Then use the Splender’ pencil heavily over all areas of colour to burnish and blend the colours as smoothly as possible.

Step 3: Finally the highlights and lighter areas of bracts can be burnished with white. Muted highlights on tomatoes are burnished with Faber-Castell white while the main highlights are put in with Karisma white, which has a much softer, creamier consistency. The tomato can then be polished carefully with clean cotton buds to shine the surface and remove all traces of pencil marks. The surrounding paper can be cleaned with a putty rubber.

Step 4: To complete the botanical accuracy , fine hairs are added to the bracts and stem with an 0.3 HB propelling pencil.