Yesterday I bit off a bit more than I could chew. I used mixed media paper. I usually use watercolor paper. I also tried to draw/paint a complicated form AND concentrate on the dark and light areas. The composition was passable, but today I am taking a step back.
Today’s experiment:
I happened upon a book I bought years ago, The Elements of Drawing by John Ruskin, a 19th century artist. He started off by suggesting several exercises: drawing even parallel lines in ink, from very closely-spaced, gradually increasing in separation, to effect a tonal change from dark to light; using a pencil to evenly shade a square area of the paper, progressively changing from darkest to lightest in adjacent squares.
After one attains the skill of shading any area with the desired tone, it should be a simple matter to match the values of a scene and re-create each patch on the paper. If the size and relationship between the dark and light areas are properly transferred, one should have a drawing that reflects the reality of the scene.
This is what I tried to do today. Here is my first drawing done in my back yard:
Back yard – First Pass
The prospect of shading this scene was daunting, especially given the 11×14 inch size of the paper. It isn’t easy creating an even tone over such a large area. The leaves of the kumquat bush were small compared to the overall size of the paper; some of them were in the light and some in the shade. Another problem was time. It took me so long shade the different tonal patches, that the lighting changed. I was glad I took a reference photograph to remind me of the back yard at the moment I sat down to draw.
Back Yard – Reference Photo
Quite a stark difference between the photo and the sketch above: the photograph was much more contrasty.
After I went inside to my study (since the lighting was no longer appropriate outside), I saw the deficiencies in the drawing and touched it up.
Back Yard – Touchup
11″x14″ 140# Mixed Media Paper
Comment:
I should go back to the drawing board and do the exercises in Ruskin’s book. They seem to be easy, but it takes a lot of control. I should do them every day, like calisthenics. Of course the other factor is getting the patches to be the right size and in the right relationship to each other. But, as I learned yesterday: one thing at a time.
