In my art class, there is a fake Red Delicious Apple. Sketching it gives me fits. It’s a dark object, so there are only four tones (6-10) that can be used, other than the tiny spot where the light hits it.

My bright idea was to buy one, one with as many contours as possible, and sketch it at home.

For most of the time, in my sketch it looked like a bell pepper. I worked on it until I didn’t know what else to correct. That’s always my stopping point.

It took me a long time after starting art classes to try it sketching at home: about seven months, elapsed time (calendar time was longer, but with some breaks). In class, I struggled — and continue to struggle — with line drawings and tone. I finished the line drawing and tone courses and went on to the beginning oil painting course. One effort there and I knew I wasn’t ready, so I chose to return to the drawing and tone courses.

I could understand what my instructor explained when going over the steps: identify the tones, sketch large to small, triangulate, review and correct as necessary. Yes, I understood as long as she was demonstrating these aspects at my station, but as soon as she went to help another student . . . Poof! My understanding evaporated and back I went to sketching loopy dark globs. For a while I considered not even trying to accurately represent an object, but to announce that I was following in the footsteps of Salvador Dali or Picasso (in his Cubism phase). I am pretty sure neither of them would have been happy to hear that, so I continue my efforts to learn what my instructor teaches.

How many times did she tell me that a cast shadow cannot be all one tone? I don’t know and I’m pretty sure she’s not finished reminding me. (Oh sure, I can remember that when I’m writing . . . )

Once I went back to charcoal sketching, I knew it was time to start sketching at home. Scary stuff. About this time, I came across the OneDrawingDaily blog, and I was inspired. I haven’t done one drawing a day, but I’m working on it.

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My first pear sketch was okay, but something was off. I couldn’t figure out what to correct, so I tried it again.

Even in the few sketches that I’ve done (two pumpkin sketches, two red pear sketches), I think I’m starting to understand tone and line. And I can believe that as long I don’t show the sketches to my instructor, right?

‘Tis the season. Pumpkin sketching season, that is.

My first sketch. Looks like a pumpkin. Or what I think a pumpkin looks like; just not like the pumpkin I was looking at, so I abandoned the sketch.

The real pumpkin.

My second effort. And there is something funny about this one. The real pumpkin is a little lopsided but my drawing doesn’t reflect it accurately. Usually it’s the other way around: my drawing is lopsided and the model objects are not. I’m looking forward to the time when my drawings match the model shapes. Won’t that be something to celebrate.

This was only my second independent (not in class) sketching effort.

After struggling with my first oil painting, I realized that I don’t know enough about tone. I returned to using charcoal and sketched an apple. I spent three hours on this apple. I think it’s recognizable as an apple, but not necessarily the apple I used as my subject. Sigh.

The bamboo skewer is there to point out to me where the top of the shadow is relative to the top of the apple. (From where I sat when I sketched the apple, the shadow was lower than how it looks in the photo.) When I first sketched the apple, the shadow was much higher. Why? I don’t know.

My first problem was that I shaded my background way too dark (I laid down a 6 tone and it should have been a 4) and then had trouble distinguishing the dark tones of the apple and its shadow (tones 6-10). The instructor put a 6-tone fabric under the apple to help me see the difference in a 4 tone and a 6 tone. You can barely see the lighter fabric in the top right corner of the photo.

The tone chart goes from light to dark. I know that 1 is white and 10 is black. I might even be able to put down on paper a correct likeness of 2 (one tone darker than white) and 9 (one tone lighter than black). But talk to me of a 4, 5 or 6 and I will not be able to mass it in correctly.

What did I do in that three hours? I sketched in the apple, put in tones . . . and then erased them. I did this several times trying to get the shape and tones of the apple correct, as well as the shape and the tones of the shadow. I’m getting really good at erasing.

I’m choosing to work on tones in charcoal a while before my next oil painting effort. We’ll see how long that takes.