Shells....

One of the next thing our teacher told us to do, was a series of observational drawings and studies of shells. Most people in the class complained, but I didn't. I like drawing, and shells are very interesting subjects. My first attempt ended up looking more like a snail, but I was told to include, so please ignore it. It's horrible.

I Like shells.... Each one is different and equally as intricate and beautiful as the next. Above is the mounted sheet that I created from my various shell drawings, plus some annotation. The media I used war: tonal pencil, watercolour, oil pastel, and coloured pencil.

I like using watercolour when I'm doing studies of naturalistic objects... They seem to flow nicely and work well together. This was a nice shell, but it had no real defining features. It was very smooth and small, and the shadow was hardest to create

But this one is my favourite. It's a close up enlargement of the detail on one of the shells, using tonal, coloured pencils. It's so delicate, and detailed, and loved doing it, looking so close at the detail of one tiny shell barely wider than my thumb... All of the different ridges and tonal variation. I love it.