Strawberries, Apple, Onion, & Mushroom

I continued working on the exercises from Jackie Simmonds's You Can Sketch. The drawings look better on screen than in my drawing book. In my sketchbook, I'm only happy with the apple.

I didn't crosshatch the strawberries properly, so I used a colorless blender to create the same effect. Somehow they seem to look OK on screen.

The onion is a sad story, but it's hard to see the faults on screen. The original exercise requires a pastel pencil. Since I don't have that, I used a colored pencil and a colorless blender instead. Just when I was happy with being able to get away with it, I found it very difficult to add the texture on a layer of thick wax. (The colorless blender I have is a basically a wax stick.) I almost gave up, but the nice yellow blend called me back to finish it up. So I did.

I didn't have high hopes for the mushroom, because it was more of a sketch than a drawing. It looks OK, but you can bet that I won't eat a mushroom like this.

Media: colored pencils.