A pencil drawing of a shallot

A Pencil Drawing of a Shallot

For this part of the lesson, I would really encourage you to draw along with me. I'll be breaking it down into manageable steps and offering tips along the way.

You Will Need

• Paper
• Pencil
• A shallot specimen
• Putty rubber
• Divider

Step 1

Choose a specimen that you like and that has some visual interest; this could be fluffy roots or an interesting stalk. It's also a good idea to select a specimen that is 'true to form' and matches what your viewer would expect a shallot to look like.

Step 2

Get the placement of your specimen right, positioning it at an attractive angle that feels natural to draw. You want to avoid anything pointing directly towards you and instead position these elements to the side. Elevate it onto a plinth of some kind and secure the angle with a piece of putty rubber.

Step 3

Draw the outline of your specimen. Unfortunately there are no magic shortcuts to drawing, and getting better is all about practice. Just like sport, you are training a muscle to perform. I can, however, offer some helpful tips for how to approach drawing.

• When drawing something spherical, it can be useful to draw a very faint straight line vertically through the centre like an axis. This can help you to see if the shape is roughly even on both sides of the line.
• Draw your outline very faintly so that it's easy to rub out - this enables you to have lots of tries at perfecting the shape.
• Break your specimen down into different shapes. Start with the main bulb, then move onto the protruding elements.
• I always like to paint specimens to scale, so I'll translate the exact proportions onto the paper. I use a divider to do this, measuring the size of each element, and replicating this measurement into the drawing.

Step 4

Once you're happy with the outline you have drawn, it's time to start shading. Begin on the lower right hand side; this will be your darkest part as it's the section where the specimen would receive the lowest amount of light. Use the pencil in a continuous tight circular motion, and try not to take it off the page as much as you can. As you move across the shape, take the pressure off the pencil gradually to make your shading lighter.

Step 5

Keep going across your shape, creating sections of shadow and highlight to portray the illusion of form. There are a few key areas that are always darker on a specimen, and are good to keep in mind when shading.

• Shadows typically form where a shape falls away from the eye - on a shallot this is around the edge, as well as down to the roots and up to the stalk.
• Areas underneath folds are always darker.
• Sometimes you will have elements layered one in front of another, such as a petal or the skin of an onion. The layer behind should be darker than the one in front.

Step 6

When you have largely captured the form of your specimen with shading, you can begin to add in the details. This could be fine lines or marks on the skin, or fleshing out elements such as stalks, leaves or roots. Try to keep the sense of light and dark that you have built up with shading; when adding details into your highlight areas, keep them very light and vice versa within the areas of shadow.

Your Assignment

Practise your shading using basic sphere, cylinder and bowl shapes. Then, if you haven't already followed along with me, have a go drawing a shallot yourself, focusing on the contrast between light and dark to create the illusion of form.