Colored Candy

Artist Statement

For this project we were assigned to draw a candy still life. Being a fully remote learner I had to improvise so I took a picture of a San Pellegrino bottle, and then later my friend sent me a picture of french Macaroons which I also decided to draw but on a different piece of paper. I first chose to draw a San Pellegrino because they are a drink that my family doesn't get too often so when we do they are always a nice treat. I also really liked how it was in a glass bottle, because we traditionally get the ones in the cans. Like I mentioned before, I had a friend send me a pictures of the Macarons because I had told her that I wanted to draw something else because I felt like my idea for a San Pellegrino alone would be a little to plain and feel empty.

The materials I used in this piece were watercolors, colored pencils, graphite pencils, and bristol board. I used bristol board because it is a thicker paper that can handle different types of materials, such as watercolors. I first decided to use watercolor to get a base color for all objects. Then I went in with colored pencil to work on some of the shading and getting more of my values. After that I used graphite pencils to create some shadows and to give the object their dark darks, to make somethings stand out more.

For this piece I first started with a sketch, which I transferred to my bristol board. After that I started laying down my watercolor as a base color. I then went in with my colored pencils to try and start getting my colors right. One thing that I discovered was that colored pencil over watercolor doesn't really work the best, in my case the water color was really rough and the pencil was too soft causing the pencil to not layer very well. I honestly don't think this is my best work and I don't like how this piece turned out. I think if I did this piece again I would definitely plan things out more because I clearly didn't for this project.