“Pears”

In January of 2015, I entered an art contest in the Facebook group Reference Photos for Artists – 2.  There are a number of free reference photo groups for artists, and some of them have weekly or monthly challenges.  In this particular group, they choose one photo, and all participants are to reproduce the photo in their own style with their own touches however they like in their preferred medium.  The winner got their drawing / painting featured as the cover photo for the group for the next month.

My framer had just gotten through telling me that my artwork was all starting to look the same, and I should challenge myself.  He suggested a number of things, none of which I wanted to do (all of which I ended up doing), including a still life.  I’d been wanting to try my hand at glass or metal, so when this challenge with a photo by Debbie Peaty came up, I decided to compete.  Hey, I wanted glass, and this certainly looked challenging!

Well, I spent four days on it, and in the end, I submitted a piece I was pretty proud of.  I lightened up the grey background because I just wanted to use the grey pastel stick I had on hand, and I greened up the pears because I just think pears are green.  I could see that they are yellow, but I wanted my pears green.  So I ended up with this:

The above piece took first place in the contest and was featured as the group’s cover photo for the month of February.  I had enjoyed drawing glass, but the entire time I was drawing it, especially once I understood the true shape of the glass bowl, I kept seeing something different from what I had drawn.  Something intriguing.  Something I wondered whether anyone else saw.  It nagged at me, as I suppose art should, until finally I put it down on paper.  I didn’t spend nearly the time or energy putting it down on paper that I had spent on the “real” drawing, but I did this little abstract piece.  It’s the only abstract I’ve ever done.