It doesn't look as good as Thaneeya's, of course. And it looks a lot better when viewed from afar!
But drawing this taught me something: Glass is "colorless" to the observer, but in order to render it looking that way, there has to be some color, because the glass reflects surrounding objects (such as the table it sits on, or other nearby objects). So if you really look, glass is not colorless at all when you get down to depicting it in color pencil (or any other medium).
The colors used here for the glass ranged from white to pale sage and powder blue and various shades of grey, aside from the bold red and blue stripes within the marble itself.
Color pencil art (and indeed, all art) requires you to leave behind what you perceive when you "see". You could, for example, "see" a clear-glass bottle of white wine. But you can also see the vertical swathes of bright white on the bottle, lying right next to swathes of very deep greys or whatever reflected color the glass has picked up; and these contrasting colors are right next to each other, with pin-sharp borders, no intermediate shades in between. It's this high contrast that contributes to the shine in glass and metal. Even each "clear" droplet of condensation on glass isn't truly colorless.
Another takeaway from this is that you need a very steady hand - see my somewhat shaky dark grey outline at the top of the marble! - and very sharp pencils, in order that the white bits of reflection are sharply defined.
A look at my collection of Pinterest pictures, showing Mason jars filled with marbles, or "sweating" glasses of cold drinks (complete with ice cubes) really tells me that, in this business, I have miles to go before I sleep.
Doing this marble was my first step in coming away from coloring books and venturing into drawing and coloring in my own pictures. Ambitious? Yes. Do I have enough time to indulge in this right now? Not really!
Having to go to work gets in the way of everything. Every damned day.
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