Drawing Food — Koosje Koene

Last Tuesday, I shared a Draw Tip Tuesday video about how interesting it can be to draw one object many times, filling a whole page. It’s a great way to step away from the idea that you need to draw something important or meaningful. You want to draw, after all, and you should be spending time doing that, rather than coming up with a brilliant idea or subject.
Drawing the same thing over and over never gets boring, but also: take a look at your sketchbook pages. You might notice that there are certain themes or topics that show up regularly in your sketchbook. It’s because they are interesting to you or because they are just right in front of you. And the topic may seem quite random, but in the context of your sketchbook, it isn’t. It’s all part of your story. And it’s exciting! In my upcoming book, I even wrote a section about recurring topics, because it’s so interesting and inspiring

Food and beverages show up a lot in my sketchbooks. I love cooking and eating. At lunch, I’m often already thinking about what I’m going to eat in the evening, and when I go to bed, I’m already looking forward to the cup of coffee I’ll make for myself the next morning. So it’s natural that food and drink feature regularly in my sketchbooks. Food is a fantastic subject – it’s so versatile. You can draw your plate of food, or if you don’t want your food to get cold, you can pull out your sketchbook after dinner and draw your plate with only some crumbs or leftovers on it.

You can draw the ingredients of a dish before you start cooking. Of course there’s the classic subject: a bowl of fruit.

Then there are the groceries, before you put them away. Remember that everything is interesting the moment you start drawing it, and since you eat every day anyway, it’s a perfect opportunity to make drawing a daily habit.
It works incredibly well for me!

Just for fun, I regularly record what I eat during the day. I’ll play with composition and fun lettering, adding some notes or simply the title “What I Ate Today” and the date. You could replace the food topic. What I wore, what I bought… what else could you come up with? Since I am kind of obsessed with food, it only made sense to do this with my meals. Sometimes I draw complete meals, or break them apart by drawing ingredients, put things neatly in order or make a big jumble of food items.

If you ever run out of ideas, recurring topics like what you’re eating or wearing are great drawing prompts, and ones you can even do throughout your day for little quick drawing breaks.

I like doing them at the end of the day as a way to unwind. You go through your day, thinking about the highlights, stuff that made you smile, conversations you had as you draw. Sometimes during my day, I’m thinking about how to draw that strawberry or afternoon snack, looking forward to the moment I get to sit down and draw.

You might not think what you eat is all that interesting, but wait until you start drawing it!