Look at your art reference. Using your pencil and eraser on a sheet of paper, come up with a few thumbnail sketches to figure out your composition. Keep it sketchy because this doesn’t have to be exact. It could give you some additional ideas of how to create your drawing.
Grab a new sheet of paper (I used half of an 8.5x11 piece) and start to work out the shape of the pear in the foreground with your pencil. See the relationship between the two pears on the plate and remember that the second pear is toward the background and should be smaller and higher than the other pear on your paper.
Continue to look back and forth between the reference image and your drawing, as you fill in the oval shadows under the pears, the plate they are sitting on, the edge of the table in the background, and a line showing the shadow shape that is on both pears.
Now we will add some extra line work that is not in the image to help break up the space. Example: Adding a sun-like shape in the background with diagonal lines to create the rays of sunshine, straight horizontal lines on the back of the table, and then straight vertical lines below the plate. I chose to keep a lot of the lines straight to make them different from the roundness of the pears and plate. I allowed the sun to be a semi-circle because it helps connect with the pears and frames the fruit in the composition.
With your Sharpie marker, outline the pencil lines that you want to keep in the final composition. Once the ink dries, you can erase any extra pencil lines with your eraser.
You can choose to either leave the drawing as is or to add more ink! Each white section can be filled with pattern using either a plain black ballpoint pen or different colored ballpoint pens. If you would like to join in, every October artists or artists-in-training can go to inktober.com to check out the 2020 Inktober Classic list of prompts for every day of October. It is a great way to practice your drawing skills and to share it with the world! Take a photo of your inked drawing that fits the daily prompt and post it on any social media with the hashtag #inktober.
