Drawing Tutorial- How to Draw still life

I made this tutorial to show the different steps that I take in drawing a realistic still life drawing. There are many different methods though, so don't rely purely on this one.

Step 1 For this still life tutorial I chose to draw a zippo lighter. I have drawn them quite a few times in the past but I always enjoy them. The first step was getting an outline. I also marked off where some highlights will be.


Step 2 I began drawing from left to right, top to bottom. Working this way, I never have to rest my hand on a finished part of a drawing. I carefully drew around the highlights with a mechanical 3B.


Step 3 I continued on drawing the flint and starting the metal. I noticed some highlights around the holes in the metal so I drew around them. When drawing highlights, compare them to eachother to make sure they are pure white. You will find that some highlights are not pure white.


Step 4 I came across a brilliant highlight in the metal and when comparing to other light parts, I saw that the holes in the metal should be lightly shaded. This made the highlight stand out more too.


Step 5 The top of the lighter was done at this point. I compared tones to eachother and tweaked parts that needed lightening or darkening.


Step 6 It was time to move onto the bottom part of the lighter. I started this off by laying down some B graphite. The zippo had alot of scratches in it that I wanted to show so I started making little random highlights all over. There was another highlight on the left side so I drew around it.


Step 7 The bottom part of the zippo is lighter on the left side and darker on the right so I began laying down some 3B on the right side and blending it into the left. I did not use blending stumps for this though. Blending stumps would give too smooth of an effect so I just used some good old fashioned cross hatching here. There were some highlights in the darker/right side also but not as bright as on the left so I pulled those out with an eraser.


Step 8 I worked on the scratches on the lighter for quite a while until I liked how they looked. I made sure to really look close at my reference to see how they actually appeared. There was some indirect light on the right side of the zippo so I rendered it lighter.


Step 9 I moved on to the lid closing mechanism at the top of the zippo. I made sure to draw around the highlights on the rivet.


Step 10 Next came the lid. I started drawing the darkest parts of the lid and drew around the highlight.


Step 11 I filled in the rest of the lid using a 3B with a cross hatching technique. There were a couple highlights on the lid so I pulled them out with a kneaded eraser. I then layed down some 3B for the cast shadow under the lid. I always blend my shadows because I think it makes them look better. Almost done now.


Step 12 I finished the drawing off by drawing the bottom of the lighter. I used a B pencil for this. After that I blended the cast shadow under the bottom same as I did for the last step. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial.


I hope this tutorial has helped you in some way or another. I can explain how I do things all day but the basic idea of drawing is to just understand how tones flow and to train your eye to see what others don't see.

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