I’ve never been too big on drawing still life. I find most of my inspiration looking at people and the way their faces change depending on what they’re thinking, seeing, feeling… But you can’t do that with still life! What is a lemon going to tell you about his feelings?
However, when boredom is at its peak and you have nothing else but paper, some crayons and lemons your mum bought at the market… You have no other choice but to make use of those lemons. And I don’t mean making lemonade with them, I mean using them to practice a skill you had been disregarding for months: drawing still life. That’s kind of what happened with my series of fruits. Sometimes, after drawing faces for a long time, and although I love doing that, I also need to take a break and look for other things I could try out. And it was also a good opportunity to practise using colour, two birds with one stone, you know?
Step by step, we make juice.
With the lemons, which were the first still life that I drew, I learned a little more about how to use basic shapes for drawing, aside from those used for portraits. The difficulty I found was in giving the impression of depth. It was especially hard to find how to angle my lines for my lemons to actually look like lemons and not like stickers… If I could give advice to the old me, I would introduce her to the concept of “The box“. I recently found out about it through BrokenDraw on YouTube, and it got me practising and thinking about shapes, rather than the end product.
It’s great because the concept is quite simple, and it allows for quick practice. It helps you get used to the way lines bend and curve depending on your point of view. A box is something we are all used to. It is somewhat of a simple shape (at least the idea of it is…) and you can find it anywhere around you. As he explains in his video, it’s the base of all the shapes you could find during practice. Each and every little shape fits into the box. That means, once you’ve mastered most of the possible angles of the box and you can draw them from memory, you can basically draw anything you want in perspective. Then, you can start experimenting with other shapes like rectangles, ovals, tubes and so on.
Lemon juice is bitter tho…
The thing is getting used to the box. I’m explaining the concept here, but, to be honest, I still haven’t got used to it yet. Perspective has always been something that I find horribly frustrating and difficult. But I’m trying to get better! However, I do think that for the sake of your own well-being, you shouldn’t focus too much on the box. Keep it casual! Not mastering it doesn’t mean that your art sucks. Do it for fun, or see it as a challenge, but don’t let box drawings fill up your sketchbooks, I beg you.
Just practising it from time to time will bring you visible results without making you lose your mind. I mean, I started drawing still life without knowing anything about the box and I still thought that those drawings were good enough to post on a website and write about them, so… Make of this what you will.
In the end, it all comes down to what your goals are and what you are interested in. If you are crazy about perspective and your goal is to draw from memory like Kim Jung Gi, then go for it! Sadly, that’s just not for me. Remember, draw for yourself and what you enjoy! You’ll always find someone that likes your work, be it with or without knowledge about the box!
