About five years ago I got pretty interested in drawing, and art in general, and even attended a few classes. This proved to be great fun and I managed to put together a few pictures which I'm still happy with all these years later. Unfortunately I found myself falling out of the habit of drawing after a while, as life got in the way, and all of my tools got packed away in the cupboard of failed hobbies.
Fast-forward to the present day and I've realised that I still want to create art and to put myself in a position where I can reliably pull together pictures which I'd be happy to have on display. The way to achieve this is through practice and, more specifically, through deliberate practice (if Malcom Gladwell and his 10,000 hour rule really holds true). Now I don't actually have a spare 10,000 hours lying around but I figure that if I can consistently practice for around 30 minutes every single day for a year then I'm bound to notice an improvement.
So I've got myself a copy of Drawing for the Absolute & Utter Beginner on the basis that this is a popular guide which claims to be able to help beginners get to grips with drawing:
It looks like a pretty good starting point and to kick things off I spent a bit of time drawing this orange:
Now I haven't been entirely successful at conveying the spherical nature of the fruit and there's a level of detail that is absent but I do rather like the range and variety of colour which I achieved. That said I could do with more range between the darkest and lightest areas as I seem to have flattened out the level of contrast.