Shading Techniques: Hatching, Scribbling, Pointillism
Jun 29, 2009 Drawing
I have already talked about smooth, blended shading, which is what most people are familiar with. Today I am going to touch on some other shading techniques that allow the artist some creativity when it comes to texture. These techniques create patterns and texture through mark-making. You can do realistic shading with pretty much any mark, as long as you pay close attention to the tonal value and adjust your mark-making accordingly.
For darker areas you can use a softer pencil or a wider pen, make your marks darker and closer together. For the lighter areas, use a harder pencil or a thinner pen, press lightly and space your marks out. You can use these techniques with almost any medium: pencil, pen, charcoal, pastel, etc.
If you’re thinking, “but I want my drawings to look realistic,” don’t worry! It is absolutely possible to achieve photorealism with these techniques. Drawings done like this can be very interesting because from far away, they look like a picture, and as you get closer you begin to see the patterns. For an excellent example of this, have a look at Chuck Close. His large scale portraits are extremely realistic from a distance, but closer up they dissolve into a combination of coloured marks.
This type of shading can be useful in portraying an emotion or a personality along with a likeness. Different techniques can even be combined to create different textures. Scribbled shading on a sweater, for example, can show that it is soft and fuzzy in comparison to smoothly blended skin.
The best part about this is that its fun and challenging! If you’r comfortable with smooth blending, or just want a new challenge, give this a try. It’s a great way to practice your drawing and observation skills.
Hatching
Hatching is a series of short parallel marks. The marks can be going diagonally, horizontally, or vertically, but they should all line up. You can also try cross-hatching, when the marks cross over eachother at perpendicular angles. This piece shows hatching done in charcoal.
Scribbles
This was done in ink by scribbling the pen back and forth. This piece happens to have all vertical marks, but you can also try a more messy approach to scribbling.
Circular Scribbles
This is the same type of scribbled shading, but this time the marks are all circular. Done in graphite, this could also be blended using circular strokes.
Pointillism
Pointillism is done with a series of dots. It is very time consuming can produce some great results!
Tags: better drawings, drawing tips, pointillism, shading
Western Front - Abstract Oil Painting
Jun 26, 2009 On my Easel
I thought I’d add a category to show the pieces I’m currently working on. This piece has been in progress for the past week or so and I’ve just finished it up today. It’s funny how some paintings are a real struggle, and some come together so easily. This was one of the ones where everything just seemed to work right off the bat! I love it when that happens!
Here is my acrylic underpainting. I use a bright colour for the underpaintings to indulge myself and to keep myself excited about the painting.
After the first layer oils in sienna and ochre. I love how the bright blue peaks through and contrasts against the more neutral colours.
After filling in the blue areas and fleshing out the brown shapes. The centre is a mix of alizarin and burnt sienna. I like working the different colours into the whole of the painting, it makes the piece much more unified.
And here is the final product after a few finishing touches! You can see that there are still places where the blue underpainting comes through.
Tags: art, oil painting, paintings
How to Draw Eyes
Jun 25, 2009 Drawing
Eyes can be very tricky to draw, mostly because we all have preconceived ideas about what an eye looks like. Again, this is where a detailed reference comes into play. The eyes can be the key to the success or failure of a drawing. As they say, the eyes are “the window the soul” and can capture the personality of a portrait.
View my step by step tutorial on how to draw the eyes.
Here are a few general tips to keep in mind when drawing eyes:
- The eyeball is a sphere, it should be shaded as one.
- Don’t forget the highlight, this is what gives the eye its sparkle!
- The cornea (the lense covering the iris) sticks out from the eyeball. This means that the lids will be widest wherever the iris ispointing.
- The iris is the perfect circle found in faces, but this is only when we see it from head on. When we see it at an angle, it becomes an ellipse.
- Eyelashes are curved, and they grow in all directions crossing over eachother.
- Eyelashes close to the inner eye sometimes point down and cross the eye itself.
- Don’t forget about the tear duct! This has a distinct shape, shadows and highlights of its own.
- You can often see the inner edge of the eyelid, especially on the bottom lid, before the lashes start growing.
- The iris is not a solid colour, it has radial patterns and usually a dark inner and outer ring.
On the Web
On my travels through various art blogs, I’ve come across some excellent tips and tutorials. Each of these approaches drawing the eye in a different way, giving you the advantage of a couple different techniques.
Annette Labedzki’s article describes the steps to consider when drawing the eye.
Visit Stan Prokopenko’s blog for a tutorial that very clearly demonstrates the structure of the eye and how to draw it.
And finally, Faith Te’s tutorial gives a step by step guide to drawing and shading the eye. She uses graphite powder and brushes, but her process can be used with other techniques as well.
Tags: better drawings, draw eyes, drawing tips, getting started, portraits
5 Tips for Better Drawings
Jun 24, 2009 Drawing
Read on for five easy ways to improve your drawings! Can’t get enough? Here’s 5 More Tips for Better Drawings.
1. Refer, Refer, Refer
A reference is essential for accurate, realistic drawings, whether it’s a photo or from life. This is especially true for those who are just beginning to draw, and when it comes to reference material, quality is key! Your drawing will only be as good as your reference. If you’re working from life, pick a time of day that provides a good light source, or set up your own. Photos can be trickier: try to find photos that are clear and provide a lot of detail. Again, lighting is very important. Avoid photos that have been taken with flash, as this lighting is very unnatural and makes for harsh shadows and highlights. If you can, take your own photos for reference. If you can’t, consider mixing and matching references to get what you need.
2. Look and Learn
Once you have your reference material, look at it! Knowing how to see is as important as knowing how to draw. Look at the relationships between shapes and objects, see the wrinkles around eyes and the patterns in irises, notice the shapes of individual species of trees. These kinds of details are sometimes overlooked when we are caught up in the challenge of drawing the bigger picture, but it’s these kinds of details that will make the big picture.
3. Sketch, Don’t Press
A common mistake made by beginner artists is expecting their first line to be the right one. They press down with their pencil and draw one continuous, deliberate line. Then, when they find they’ve made a mistake, there is a lot of erasing to be done. It’s much easier to sketch the lines of your drawing. Try drawing very lightly with short pencil strokes overlapping eachother. Each line is a correction of the line drawn before; as you see things going in the wrong direction, fix it. When you’re finished, you can easily erase the extra lines.
4. Crank the Contrast
I can’t stress this enough! You will see your drawings greatly improve if you punch up the contrast and provide a range of values. I’ve seen portraits that were beautifully drawn and beautifully shaded, but so light that I could barely distinguish the drawing from the page! In fact, that is the way I used to draw, until I got some advice from another artist. Don’t be afraid of dark, deep shadows! This is what creates a sense of depth and three dimensionality.
5. Take a Step Back
This is important to do while you are working on a drawing. Sometimes, we can get so focused on the area we are working on that we forget the rest of the piece. Take a moment to step back and look at your drawing and make sure that it’s actually working as a whole. An element of a drawing can look perfect in isolation, and it’s not until you’re finished that you realize it’s not quite right in the context of the rest of the drawing. By making a point of looking at your work in progress, you can fix things as you go, instead of being faced with the prospect of re-vamping your entire drawing.
Drawing Portraits: Proportions of the Head
Jun 17, 2009 Drawing
Portraits can be one of the most challenging and rewarding things you will ever draw. No two people look alike, and drawing portraits requires that you use your observation skills and pay close attention to detail. Even though every face is different, there are some general guidelines to help you when it comes to the proportions of the human face. This tutorial will take you through the steps of sketching facial proportions.
First, the shape of the head is oval, slightly narrower at the bottom than the top.
Draw a horizontal and a vertical line through the center of your oval. The vertical line will help you place the nose, and the horizontal line tells you where the eyes should go. It is a misconception that eyes are at the top of our heads. There’s actually just as much head above the eyes as below, so we put the eyes in the middle of the oval.
Make four short marks to indicate the corners of the eyes. Keep in mind that the space between the two eyes is the same as the length of one eye. The space on either side of each eye is the length of approximately half an eye (or just slightly more). Draw in your eyes, don’t forget about the tear duct!
For the nose, draw a short line just short of halfway between the eyes and the chin. Another slightly longer line will be the lips, again drawn just short of halfway between the nose and the chin.
Next, to draw the nose, start from the inside corners of the eye and go straight down. These points will be the edge of the nostrils.
The corners of the mouth can be found by drawing a line straight down from the center of the pupils.
To find the placement of the eyebrows, you will use the corners of the eyes and the tip of the nose. Go straight up from the inner corners of the eye to find the inside edge of the brow. Draw a line from the tip of the nose through the outside corner of the eye for the end of the brow. Womens eyebrows are usually higher on the face, thinner and more arched. Men’s brows are thicker, lower, and less arched.
Ears are actually bigger than you might guess. The tops of the ears line up with the eyebrows and the bottoms of the ears line up with the bottom of the nose.
The hairline generally comes about halfway down the forehead. Also, don’t forget the neck! It’s thicker than you might think. The neck is almost as wide as the head itself.
By keeping these proportions in mind, you will have an easier time in placing facial features with in the face. However, it’s still very important to pay close attention to your reference. These proportions are guidelines, not rules, as some people may have slightly different proportions. Also, it’s the subtle differences in the shape of the face, the shape of the eyes, nose, and mouth that makes us all unique. These proportions help you figure out where to put the eye, but you still need to observe and draw the unique shape of that eye.
Tags: drawing tips, getting started, portraits, proportions
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