Scavenger hunt

I recently went through one of my periodic artistic crises: I simply couldn't draw anymore. I seemed to have regressed to the point where I was ten years ago. It was partly perhaps simply that I had been busy and had not really drawn anything for several months. But I began to realize what the problem was: I had become lazy and instead of setting up simple still life arrangements or taking a sketchbook outside to draw from life, I had begun to rely on reference photos.

Some people can make beautiful art from reference photos. I can't. Whenever I try, the result is always the same: everything is out of proportion and flat and uninteresting, and looks less real than a stick figure. I learn this lesson about once every year, and then I forget it again. So here I once again promise myself to never draw from reference photos again. Not that I ever have time for more than rather rough sketches anyway.

As part of this New Years' resolution (and I thought I never make such resolutions!), I participated in a game on WetCanvas called "Scavenger hunt," in which one tries to draw one or more items from a somewhat random list, with basically the only rule being that they have to be drawn from direct observation, rather than from photos or memory.

So here's my scavenger hunt drawing, perhaps the first of many, of a yellow cling peach and a glass tot measure:

As often with my amateurish drawings, it is in common old HB pencil on equally common and cheap old printer paper, 18cm x 12cm.