This document provides instructions for a still life drawing exercise using chiaroscuro techniques. It recommends setting up a simple still life with directional lighting to create shadows and highlights. The instructions describe toning the paper with charcoal dust, then lightly sketching the composition and adding darks with charcoal while subtracting lights with an eraser. Finishing touches include ensuring outlines belong to objects or the background and leaving some objects extending off the edges. The goal is to create a naturalistic drawing using the subtractive and additive process.

1. STILL LIFE DRAWING
Chiaroscuro/Subtractive
and Additive Drawing

2. Set up a simple
still life

3. You can use simple bowls, cups, fruits, candles, etc.
Keep it simple.

4. Apply strong
directional lighting
on your still life to
create shadows and
highlights - drama.

5. You may need to turn out lights and use a
single light source. Experiment.

6. Using a rectangular cardboard cut-out, an old slide frame, or even your
phone. Search out your composition.

7. The famous French painter Paul Cezanne treated his still life like a landscape.

8. Now you will re-create the process from our previous exercise – the last
apple. (Chiaroscuro/subtractive/additive drawing)
Cover the paper with a little charcoal dust from charcoal shavings
(whittling tiny shavings of charcoal with a knife, scissors, etc.) You will
do a little at a time then with your paper towel, gently rub it into the
entire sheet of the paper.
You will create a light to middle value over the entire sheet – from edge
to edge. It should look like a piece of slate. Be careful not to get too
dark.
The top part of the background on
this apple is a good middle value.
You need a sheet of your 18” x 24” large
drawing paper, charcoal, pencils, erasers and
a shammy, or paper towel.

9. After toning your paper you will lightly sketch your observed composition with either, the pencil, eraser, or charcoal. If
you have cylinders, bottles and cups, you will need to pay close attention to symmetry.
Symmetry is a form of balance in which things are equal
on either side of a central axis line.
Notice the vertical axis line in the body of the cylinder and
the horizontal axis lines going through the ellipses.
This allows you to know whether your shape is
symmetrical or not.

10. To loosen up it would be highly beneficial to practice your shapes on
another sheet of paper.
When we draw circles, ellipses, long lines and gestures it is very
important to stay loose. Use the sweeping motion of your arm rather
than bearing down tightly.

11. Notice the symmetry and the axis lines.

12. Notice the
various
perspectives
of each form.

13. To help with
accuracy use
your pencil to
discover guide
–lines in your
composition

14. Add darks with charcoal, subtract the lights with the eraser.

15. Outlines must eventually belong to the object or the
background.

16. Notice how objects go off the edges.

17. If you are new to drawing, choose simple shapes for your composition (maybe a grouping of eggs).

18. You can create very naturalistic drawings with this process.

19. The same process applied to self-portraits.

20. This close up perspective is a ”less
familiar” composition and therefore
more surprising and interesting.
The small objects now take on a
monumental status.

21. Now have fun and bring lots of beauty into
the world!