In last week's tip, we addressed holding your details until towards the end of a drawing or painting. As a first step for developing that skill, I gave you an exercise practicing gesture drawing. In this tip, let's go to the next step--not drawing the details of the shapes. Nope. Let's go straight for the shadows. In gesture drawing, you capture the movement. Then, if you can switch your attention from movement to shadows, you'll be amazed at how quickly the image will begin to appear. Here's a section from a Robert Liberace drawing in progress where he's
doing just that. Notice that Liberace is just LOCATING shadows in a single middle value. He's not ready to give them variation yet. Locating is the next step. 1. Go back to your lamp or coffee maker from last week's tip. This time, use blank paper. Do a few more gesture drawings following that tip. (If you don't have it go HERE. ) 2. Practice creating patches of middle value by using repeated hatch strokes with your pencil. From one of Albrecht Durer's etchings, here's a sample of how hatching can look. The marks can be even closer together than this.
3. Select one of your
gesture drawings and within it locate just the shadow areas on your subject (coffee maker or lamp). Use the hatching strokes within all those areas in shadow. Look at Liberace's work above to see how that's going to work. 4. Do this process a dozen times or until it feels like fun rather than a chore. You can access the archive of all my newsletters at anytime by going HERE. |
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