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How to Draw a Glass of Tomatoes in Coloured Pencil

By Peter Weatherill

In short

A still life on black card that packs a lot of learning into one small picture: drawing glass and its transparency, layering coloured pencil so it glows on a dark surface, and using a contrasting background to make the fruit sing. A satisfying step up once you have a first project or two behind you.

This exercise is a favourite because it teaches several things at once. You will draw glass and the way you see through it, you will work on black paper, where colour behaves quite differently, and you will see how layering one colour over another, and choosing a contrasting background, can make a simple bowl of tomatoes glow. None of it is difficult once it is broken down, so let us take it a step at a time.

Reference photo: cherry tomatoes in a footed glass bowl, lit from one side

The reference photo. A clear, well-lit subject like this does half the work for you.

The black-paper rule: on black, your highlights are precious. Lay any white or pale highlight down first, before the colours around it, so it stays clean. You cannot easily recover a white once darker colour has covered it. (New to black paper? Start with coloured pencil on black paper.)

What you will need

Faber-Castell Polychromos on black Canford card. If you use another brand, just pick the nearest colours. The starting palette:

  • Cadmium yellow, orange and red (Polychromos 107, 111, 117) for the fruit
  • White, for highlights and the glass
  • Sky Blue (146) for the window reflections, Earth Green (168) for the stems
  • Paynes Grey (181) for the shadows
  • Phthalo Green Light and Dark (162 and 264) for the background, plus ivory black

Free traceable outline: For an accurate start, trace Peter's outline rather than drawing it all freehand. Download the outline for this exercise (PDF), print it at the size you want, and transfer it to your card as in Step 1.

Step by step

1Transfer the outline to black card

Working on black changes the drawing-out too. Make a tracing of the outline with the image reversed on the back, and go over those reversed lines with a white Polychromos pencil. Tape the trace white-side-down onto your black card and rub firmly over the back with the handle of a spoon or fork. The white lines transfer across. Never rub with a pencil, as it digs grooves into the card.

2Redraw the glass and mark the reflections

Sharpen your white pencil to a fine point and redraw the lines of the glass crisply. Then block in the window reflections with Sky Blue, filling them as solid shapes rather than outlining them, so you are not left with white lines around the blue.

3Build each tomato, highlight first

Work the tomatoes one at a time. Lay each white highlight down first to protect it. Then add yellow with a sharp point, always working from the inside of a curve outward to keep a clean edge, and keeping yellow off the darkest parts of the fruit. Follow with orange, then red. Leave the green stems and centres as bare black card for now. The close-up shows how one tomato is built; the photos after it show the fruit appearing across the whole bowl.

Extreme close-up of a single tomato: white highlight protected, warm colours layered over it

A single tomato up close: the white highlight is laid down and protected first, then yellow, orange and red are layered over the top.

Glass and reflection drawn in white, with the first tomato begun

With the glass and its blue reflection drawn in white, the first tomato is begun: its highlight protected, then warm colour over it.

Several tomatoes built up, one still left as bare black card

Working round one at a time. Each new tomato gets its highlight first; the next is still bare black card.

Close detail of the part-built tomatoes, showing the white highlights that make them look round and shiny

Closer in: it is the protected white highlight on each tomato that makes it read as round and glossy. The bare one waiting in the middle shows the difference.

All the tomatoes built up in warm colour against the black

All the tomatoes built up now, glowing against the black, with the background still to come.

Close detail of the finished cluster of tomatoes, every highlight crisp

The cluster up close. Every tomato keeps its bright highlight, which is what sells them as fresh and glossy.

The full cluster of tomatoes built up against the black, glass still in white guide-lines

A closer look at the built-up fruit before the background goes in: warm reds and oranges layered, each tomato keeping its protected highlight.

4Layer the colour and deepen the shadows

This is the real lesson. Colour layers behave differently on black: cadmium red over orange gives a bright middle red, while the same red alone on the black reads much darker. Build your layers, deepen the reds and greens in shadow with Paynes Grey, and put the highlights and shadows into the green stems.

5Work the background through the glass

Orange-red fruit sings against green, so a Phthalo green is the ideal contrast. Before laying it in, protect the very dark shadows around the edge of the glass with a pass of Paynes Grey: it seals the card so later colour cannot lighten those darks. Rough in a square to your intended frame edge, so the background reaches cleanly into the corners.

The green background begun, roughed in with a framing square around the glass

The background begun: a square roughed in to the frame edge, and the first Phthalo green scribbled in around the glass.

The contrasting Phthalo-green background developed further behind the glass

The green built up further. The contrast is what makes the fruit glow; the glass edges still wait to be redefined.

6Finish the glass and decide where to stop

Build the background up in layers, then return to the glass: redefine its edges and reflections with white and a touch of Sky Blue, and pick out the very edge of the base shadow with ivory black. How far you push it is your call. Peter left the background pleasantly granular from the grain of the Canford card; keep working it if you want a smoother finish.

Finished coloured pencil drawing of a glass of tomatoes on black card, shown with the colour key

Stage 6, finished, with Peter's colour key alongside it. The green background is what makes the orange-red fruit glow.

Why black paper is worth trying

On white paper you build up to your darks; on black you build up to your lights, and bright colours like these cadmiums positively glow against it. It feels back-to-front at first, but it is a wonderful way to make vivid subjects pop. More on drawing on black paper.

Carry on from here

Coloured Pencil on Black Paper

The wider guide to working on a dark surface, where you build up to the lights instead of the darks.

More still life to draw

Other still-life subjects and projects to try once the tomatoes are done.

portrait of the author Carol Leather

I'm Carol Leather, a coloured pencil artist for over 15 years. Most of my teaching comes back to the same idea: realistic coloured pencil starts with structure, light and observation long before the colour goes down.

My work has featured in Ann Kullberg's Color Magazine, CP Magic and Color Pencil Treasures (vol 7). I'm a member of the UKCPS and was a prize winner in the Nature section of their Annual Open Exhibition in 2020.