Fall Still Life Exercise
Use fruit, fall gourds or any 3D objects and learn how to set up and draw a still life picture.
Materials
- Paint Brushes Triangle Handle
- Watercolor Paint Palette
- 3 Gourds, in assorted shapes and sizes
- White Card stock
- Pencil
- Black Marker
Instructions
| Step 1. Gather your supplies.
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| Step 2.
Arrange your gourds on the table in front of your workspace in an interesting way. Try a few different arrangements, including overlapping your objects. Begin drawing the gourd that is closest to you, in this case it’s our white gourd. Discuss with children all of the different shapes and sections that they see in each form. A gourd might start out as a simple oval shape but then all of the interesting bumps and wrinkles may be added to the form. This is a great exercise in observational drawing for children! |
| Step 3.
Begin drawing your second gourd. in our example, we added the large dark green gourd, which is resting on top of the first white gourd. As the second gourd is overlapping first, we erased some of the lines previously drawn for the white gourd. This shows the second gourd in the foreground and the first one behind it. To learn more about foreground, middleground and background, click here. |
| Step 4.
Draw the final gourd, in this example, the yellow gourd. As the yellow gourd is behind the white gourd, you may need to erase the lines of the yellow gourd to show it is behind it in space. This puts the green gourd in the foreground, the white gourd in the middleground and the yellow gourd in the background. |
| Step 5.
To complete, create a festive border, phrase or additional shapes on your design. Use a black marker to outline your final drawing. |
| Step 6.
Paint your picture using your watercolor palette. Tip: for a fall theme, use warm colors, such as oranges, reds, and yellows to complete the picture. Click here to learn about additional watercolor techniques that can be done on your picture. |
