Tài liệu Drawing by Lauren Jarrett and Lisa Lenard- P4 pptx

Part 4 ➤ Developing Drawing Skills

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More Techniques

Okay, we’ve talked about supplies. Now, let’s try a few additional tech￾niques that will improve your ability to see and draw the shapes and

spaces in a composition as you add either tone or detail and texture.

Drawing in Circles Is not Going in Circles

Circles and ellipses can be seen as building blocks or basic shapes for a

lot of objects in composition, because the shapes of all the parts are

what make the whole.

Use circles and ellipses to draw space into things right from the start.

This will help in making sure that you have left enough room for

things. A circle in space is a sphere, or a ball. An ellipse is space is an

ellipsoid, rather like a rounded-off cylinder. Practice drawing them as a

warm-up and practice seeing them in the objects as you draw in the

basic shapes.

You can make a page of

marks or a tonal scale

from any new medium

to test its uses and range

of possibilities.

Back to the Drawing Board

Fancier materials can make a

fancier drawing, but not neces￾sarily a better one. Experiment,

but be sure you remember to see

and draw before you start in

with new tones and textures.

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Chapter 11 ➤ At the Finish Line: Are You Ready for More?

Scale Is Sizing Things in Space

Our eyes are wonderful, subtle lenses that work together to give us binocular vision and the

ability to see three-dimensional space. With our eyes, we can gauge how far away things are

when we look at them in space, and see the difference in scale. Even across a room, an ob￾ject is smaller than the same object seen up close. You can see this with a piece of paper

rolled up. Try it:

1. Set an object close to you and another similar object of the

same size across the room.

2. Roll up a piece of paper and look through it at the object

close to you.

3. Adjust the diameter of the roll until it just encloses the ob￾ject.

4. Now, look at the object across the room. Smaller, eh? It is

this difference in scale that you must see and draw to make

three-dimensional space and scale on your two-dimensional

paper.

Remember to draw what you see and that alone. Don’t draw what

you can’t see. Don’t even draw what you think you see—or what

you think you know.

Measuring Angles in Space

Remember that the plastic picture plane is an imaginary plane par￾allel to your eyes through which you see the world. Objects that

are parallel to your plastic picture plane appear flat; you are look￾ing straight at a side.

If an object is turned away from you and your plastic picture

plane, it appears to recede into space. The ends of the plane that

slant away from you are smaller than the ends close to you. Those

Every shape has its own

unique geometric equa￾tion.

Try Your Hand

Seeing the difference in size and

scale is the first step toward

drawing space into your work.

Try Your Hand

Drawing in circles and ellipses

can make shape, space, and vol￾ume in your drawing from the

very beginning.

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Part 4 ➤ Developing Drawing Skills

132

planes are vanishing in space and must be seen and drawn that way. In Chapter 15, “Into

the Garden with Pencils, not Shovels,” we will explain the more formal rules of perspective.

For now, seeing, measuring, and drawing the angles of things will help you put them where

they belong—in space.

The Art of Drawing

You can measure the angles of receding planes against true horizontal or vertical, without using

formal perspective rules.

Hold up your viewfinder frame and see the angle that you need to draw against one of the sides

of the frame. See the slant relative to the horizontal or vertical of the frame and draw the same

relative angle on your drawing. Or, you can hold your pencil up at horizontal or vertical. Look

at the angle you want to draw relative to your pencil, decide on the relative difference between

your pencil and the line you want to draw, and draw it in.

Back to That Race to the Finish Line

Additional elements that define objects as you are seeing and drawing them are surface de￾tail and texture. Some detail is actually part of an object, structurally or proportionally, but

other detail is more on the surface. Texture is an element that is prima￾rily on the surface and follows the shapes and contours of an object.

Sometimes, the pattern of detail or texture can make it hard to see or

distinguish tonal values that make the object have volume, so it can be

better to get the shapes first, the volume, light and shadow next, and

save the surface detail and texture for last.

When you can see and draw an arrangement and balance the various

elements, you can really begin to draw anything you want, any way

you want.

And It’s Details in the End—by a Hair

Our world is filled with detail—good, bad, and indifferent. Sometimes,

there is so much extraneous detail in our lives that we need to get away

or simplify it. But in drawing, detail tells more about the objects that

you have chosen to draw.

Choose some objects with surface detail and texture that define them.

Pick objects that appeal to you because of their detail or texture—

remember though, you will have to draw them, so don’t go overboard

at first. Human-made objects are full of interesting detail and texture,

but you can’t beat Mother Nature for pure inventiveness and variety.

Choose a natural object or two that will require your naturalist’s eye.

The Art of Drawing

Detail and texture are added in￾formation, more or less on the

surface. Detail may have more to

do with the refined shapes in

your objects, while texture may

be critical to really explaining

what you see on your objects.

But the simple shapes come as

spaces first. Until you can draw

them simultaneously and see

line, shape, space, and form, all

of them together, you won’t

truly be drawing.

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Chapter 11 ➤ At the Finish Line: Are You Ready for More?

Take a Closer Look and See the Detail

When the shapes and spaces in your composition are drawn correctly and you have estab￾lished a tonal range for dealing with the lights and darks that you can see, you can also add

surface detail in line, tone, or texture, or a mix of all three.

Some of your object choices will be rich with surface texture and

detail. To accurately describe that specific quality about an object,

you will need that vocabulary of marks, but only in response to a

real seeing of what is there.

Practice a page of marks similar to the page you created in Chapter

7, “A Room of Your Own.” You can create a tonal chart with any

new mark or texture to see how you can use it to handle tonal

variations or detail that is in both light and shadow.

Nature’s Detail Is Unending

Why not be a botanist for a day? Pick a branch from a houseplant,

a flowering plant, a flower, something from the florist, or some￾thing from your own garden or backyard.

1. Sit and see the branch or flower as you may have never seen it before.

2. Look at the direction, length, and width of the stem.

3. Look at the arrangement of the leaves on the stem. Are they opposite (across from

each other on the stem) or alternate (one on one side of the stem, one on the other

side of the stem, up the stem)?

4. Look at the shape of the leaves. Think in visual terms—what basic geometric shapes

are similar to the shape of your leaves?

Try Your Hand

Detail is part of why you pick an

object, why it seems to go nicely

with another object. Texture is

the pattern or surface of an ob￾ject and further defines it.

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Part 4 ➤ Developing Drawing Skills

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A flowering branch has its own proportion, angles, shapes, and relationships, in

the parts and as a whole, so there is a lot to see and draw.

Practice in seeing proportion in nature is practice in seeing it for anything—as

well as just good practice.

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