The size of this picture was about 350mm x250mm.
To make the picture I first took a digital photo of the lemon and saved it for future use, I then displayed the picture on a digital picture frame and I then used this image as reference to draw the lemon from.
I am slowly developing a technique of my own for drawing with soft pastels that seems to work for me.
As I don't seem to find the time to do art very much at the moment due to work pressures i tend to try and keep my subjects as simple as possible, hence the lemon art project, that and a complete lack of ideas.
To start with I took the lemon and photograph it and transfer it to a computer and digital picture frame so that i can refer back to the image at a future date. I prepare my work area with my soft pastels sorted out into a small pile to the left on my table, the paper layered flat on top of a sheet of sandpaper on top of a sheet of fine fabric as a cushion for the art piece. I find this stops the paper from loosing its texture when I rub too hard onto the paper when applying the soft pastels.
I quickly draw out a rough idea of the lemon onto the paper as an outline in a light yellow colour, I then colour in the lemon in a yellow and begin to pull out some detail, I use a blue on top of the yellow to produce the green areas on the yellow. The white areas were produced by scraping a white pastel again a knife and dropping the dust onto the picture.
The red and burgundy base was produced in a series of layers and each layer brought out a little bit more detail.
To keep a defined edge to the lemon against the background I used tracing paper cut to the shape of the lemon and placed on the lemon when drawing out the backing colour, the tracing paper protected the yellow from discolouring and gave the edge of the lemon an clean edge.
When I had completed the picture I then took a digital photo of the picture and edited the image size using an online photo editing appliction i think was called http://pixlr.com/
The reason I made this blog and other like it, is to push me into the practice of picture making as well as the practice of writing which I also need to work on, I like taking photos and I have felt the need to put content on the internet in blogs as it seems a better past time than watching more television which seems to be turning my brain to mush.
I have put some of my methods on a different blog at www.picturemaker2.wordpress.com
My day job is making engraved plaques at www.brassplaques.co.uk
