How to draw heads? Well start by copying a great master drawing of a head. If you copy a Leonardo or Michelangelo drawing the first thing you will observe from these drawings is that they are built structurally – just as an architecturally sound building ought to be - from within to without. By this I mean that the artist has initially understood the structural first and worked towards the details at a later stage. So what is the structural? Well the scull of course, followed then by the muscular structure - all those muscles, both large and small, that allow us to smile and frown and then finally the textural appearance of the skin and superficial characteristics such as eye colour. This is vitally important if one is to draw portraits successfully. It is said that the large structural shapes that make up the individual are what really make the drawing look like its subject and that the trivial details are to a much lesser degree relevant. As an experiment, why not spend a day drawing people you know without resorting to details, but instead look at their scull shape. Try and see if you can capture their essential selves and you will soon see how this forms the foundations of good portrait practise.
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Complementary colors sit opposite one another in the traditional colour circle, i.e. Red-Green, Yellow-Violet, and Blue-Orange. They are colours of maximum contrast and when placed next to one another will create a powerful visual colour effect. Illustrators sometimes produce work that is executed with just blue and orange. This combination is ideally suited to creating an illusion of depth as the blue will recede and the orange advance in space. A study of master portraits from the 18 century onwards will reveal how the cool of blue or green-blue is used to suggest the planes of the form that turn away from the viewer in space and produce a pearl like luminosity that so accurately mimics the appearance of skin. view also Pastel fixative and watercolor palette
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The mixing of pigments is a subtractive process in which the colours become less pure the more they are mixed, i.e. tending towards black, which is the opposite of what occurs when light is mixed. To avoid contamination when mixing colours with the exception of “coloured greys” it is best to remove a muddied area of colour and start again instead of adding more colour in search of a solution. That would be like adding mud to mud to mix a delicate pink! see also abstract art, cause and effect and canvas art prints
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To help minimise wastage from your tube colors and prevents rupture of the tube casing, always squeeze your tube colors from the base upwards and expel air by folding the used section of the tube back on to itself. See also brush care, tube colors and cause and effect
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The painting process is riddled with wastage of materials. You can save considerable money on tube colours by ensuring that the correct tube caps are replaced on their respective tubes. Tube tops can also become contaminated by picking up alien colours from the palette as they are used. Wiping around the top of the tube before replacing the cap can avoid this.
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How can we learn from our mistakes if we pretend they never occurred by erasing their tracks with a artists rubber? As an art teacher there is nothing more satisfying than to see a students finished drawing with all the corrections and re-adjustments still evident. There are numerous examples of this in the drawing repertoires of many a great master so always try to work out and improve your drawings without reaching for a new sheet of paper.
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It is preferable to rub out an unsuccessful drawing than reach for a new sheet of paper. Not only will this save you money but the interplay between the residue of the under drawing and the new drawing can help to spark the imagination and lead to unexpected results.
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Bockingford paper is a highly versatile watercolor paper and one ideally suited for the art beginner. There is no real need to stretch paper. Watercolour paper will expand when wet and all you really need do is with masking tape on each corner attach it to your board. When it expands simply pull it tighter at each corner. After you finish the painting you can also spray the reverse side of the watercolour paper with water and then weighted down place between a sandwich of clean dry paper.
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Symmetry should be avoided in your paintings. The human eye is most pleased by logical and structural direction. It is satisfied when it is given clear and logical steps to follow. Imagine how two identical objects positioned side by side in a painting would compete for your attention and not allow the eye to rest. Imagine how unsettling a grid of identically sized and coloured squares would be to look at and then consider how soothing the same set of squares would be if the squares themselves were arranged in a gradation of tones from the dark to the light. Composition is the order that the artist imposes on his work. Remember to always consider the subordination of elements to a main point of interest.
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Load your brush with thin white paint and then 'splatter' it on to a dark, deep blue surface - brilliant stars. The Dutch post impressionist artist 'Van Gogh' is perhaps the most famous for painting the night sky with his painting The starry night -1889 well worth a study. He has chosen to paint the clouds of gas that surround stars with swirling patterns. See also abstract art, cause and effect and American artists
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This drawing exercise teaches us to take a general view of the relationship between forms and composition. Working quickly and freely without regard to the accuracy of your drawing nor its final appearance, make several drawings of a subject without lifting the pencil from off the paper. Look at shapes over and over again and try to be as alert as you can to new relationships as they reveal themselves to you. This may be, for example, you start to see that the shadow of one object mimics that of another, or how the depth of tone of one particular edge can be picked up somewhere else. Work continuously for 10 minutes. see cause and effect
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Many photographers invest a great deal of time, effort and money pursuing the belief that buying the best more expensive camera, like the best paints, or acquiring the camera used by one of their photographic idols will help them take a better picture.
Whilst well crafted lenses or cameras have a role in helping a photographer realise their creative ambition, its worth remembering that many of the more famous photographers of the last century used a single camera or a very limited selection of equipment to realise their vision. Examples of well known modern artists who used a single camera for the majority of their life's work include Henri Cartier Bresson (French photographer 1908-2004), Diane Arbus (American photographer 1923-1971) and Edward Weston (American photographer 1886-1958).
The best camera you own is the one you're using now. Don't be put off taking photographs because you're waiting or saving up for the 'perfect camera'. Use the camera you have and push yourself further with the means you already have at your disposal . You might be surprised at the results.
Also see abstract painting and the world is flat
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Instead of bringing out your paintings only when you intend to work on them, why not keep your unfinished paintings and drawings on view around you at all times. This is the best way to advance as each morning you will be confronted by the reality and the only remedy for dissatisfaction is to push yourself harder.
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The degree to which light is absorbed or reflected when hitting an object is dependant on the nature and substance of the object. Artists need to understand this phenomenon if they are to attempt to imitate nature in their paintings and drawings. A useful exercise is to paint some brightly coloured objects placed on sheets of white paper with a white paper backdrop. You will soon see how the colours of the brightly coloured objects are reflected into the white surround and how the white surround reflects back into the objects. This useful exercise teaches us how everything we see is inter-dependant and that nothing exists in isolation. Having realised this you will start to see things you did not see before. It would be a good idea to use cylindrical objects and cubes for this exercise as from these “mother forms” from which all objects derive you will see clearly how the behaviour of reflected light on them is what creates the illusion and reality of their three dimensionality. see also canvas art prints and cause and effect
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A painting is often defined as an abstract painting if it has no recognisable objects within it. This seems to me, as a contemporary abstract painter, a rather blunt definition of abstract art. I believe that it would be more valuable in attempting to understand abstract art to demonstrate how artists are taught to see and observe the real world, and how it was through the study of representational objects and their depiction that artists were drawn to seeking solutions to more fundamental questions, regarding the nature of sight and reality, and how this resulted in what we term today as abstract art.
Firstly, it should be pointed out that abstract art is not a rebellion against the tradition of painting representational objects, but an outcome of a particular field of investigation - a historic building process. Abstract art is different from pattern. Pattern is simply the repetition of an element.
Historically, a large part of artistic endeavour has been taken up with solving questions of visual interpretation of the real world. It was only after artists had sufficiently understood how to represent the real world, that artists started to question what the real world was anyway.... Take for example a pencil drawing outline of a simple object such as a mug, pretty straight forward really, but is it? When one starts to question the representation of a mug with a series of lines, all one's preconceptions come tumbling down. Firstly, we would represent the body of the mug by two parallel vertically placed lines. One look at a mugs form, however, and one soon realises that there are no edges to represent by a line, instead only a continuous curved surface. The lines we use to represent the body of the mug, are in fact the points on the mugs curved surface at which the curved surface moves away from our view in space, just like the horizon line that we see when looking at a view of a landscape is the point at which the curved body of the earth turns away from our view. Artists use lines in this way to create an illusion of form in two dimensional representation and are called contour lines.
Now let's look at that mug again. If we forget that it is a mug for a moment, what form would best describe its nature? I would suggest a cylinder would. Now we only have to look around, to realise that a cylinder could be used to represent many objects. The legs of a table, for example, a kettle, a bottle, a vase etc. To cut a long story short, artists soon realised that the world could be broken down into a few simple forms, the cube, the cone, the sphere and the cylinder. Having understood this, mugs were no longer mugs and bottles no longer bottles, but abstract forms to be studied, observed, and experimented with. This is fundamentally how abstract art came about.
Artists were now free to investigate in this new art form called abstract art, a new world of atmospheres and feelings and particular lines of enquiry. They could investigate, for example, how shapes overlap one another, experiment with their juxtaposition, play with colors, they could invent new worlds that didn't exist, try to capture tension, create imbalance, suggest anger, etc. Quite simply, a revolution took place.
The power of abstract art is in the way it can open channels to our inner core, our emotions, unlike any representational art can. Abstract art can achieve this as we are stripped of the need to digest and assimilate the representations of real objects, and free as an observer to feel and be taken by the artists away from the expectation of our preconceptions.
Wassily Kandinsky (Russia 1866-1944) was the first artist to break with the past and paint purely abstract paintings. The debate and experiment that lead to the art movement called abstract art, had however, begun earlier and it is possible to trace its roots back to Cezanne (France 1839-1906).
There will always be good and bad abstract art, but good abstract art will be born of a process, the process of investigation and be judged by how well the artist poses questions and presents solutions in his/her paintings. Imagine a room full of furniture cut up into unrecognisable pieces and reassembled into a new world, a world of hope, vision and mystery. For reference see also artists drawings, brush care, Dutch Masters and the world is flat.
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Instead of making you own composition of a subject why not set about painting or drawing the first randomly organised grouping you see around you. This might be the jacket you threw on the bed as you arrived home that sits on the book you were reading before going to bed the night before that’s next to your dozing pet cat! This is a good exercise in dictating to your subject rather than letting it dictate to you. You will be forced to seek out more unusual ways to paint it if you are to be successful in making it interesting! Why not also paint an abstract painting from the composition. See also Art tips, cause and effect and art quotes
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Pastels contain pigment and pigment is expensive. It is easy when using pastels not to get the most out of their use. Instead of wasting all the little ends of pastel sticks and the fragments of a stick that has fallen and broken into tiny bits, collect them together and work them into another stick by adding some drops of alcohol. See also color mixing, art meaning and the art student
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The stress free time art students spend at art school is invaluable in allowing the budding artist to develop more specialist interests - ones which hopefully will become the basis of a successful career on graduating. A great way to better your understanding of your interests even if you don’t go to art school, is to sit down with a pile of art books and make notes about everything that you like and everything that you don’t. Try to observe patterns in your likes and hates group. Build connections between your likes. Look at paintings and consider how you might build on them, or improve on them, or how badly you feel they have resolved a visual question.
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Falling into patterns of behaviour is a common human trait. The art of experiment is the art of breaking the patterns that the lazy mind subjects us to. I remember living in a shared house where another tenant would on returning home at any hour of the day or night, fill the kettle with water and then retire to his room. Breaking these habits which invariable will creep into one’s artistic life is a challenge and one that one has to confront if one is to develop as an artist. As an exercise try scribbling with a pencil or charcoal on a sheet of paper. Naturally the inclination is to fall into repetitions of motion, for example, circular or angular patterns. Instead, try to vary the scribble as much as you can and not to repeat the same motion twice.
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Just as a golfer uses different irons for different shots its important that you consider the relationship between your subject and your choice of medium. For example when painting a portrait of a weathered Fisherman’s face you might consider the textural quality of pastels rather than the silky smoothness of watercolour!
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We are all guilty of the smugness trap of over confidence in face of the task ahead, of thinking we know how things look, how to represent them, how to achieve effects, etc. The only end result for this thinking process is art that is over stylised and designed and lacking in originality and the depth. A useful trick to help one avoid this is to try different mediums and different combinations of mediums every time you start a new work. You can try this easily by going out to do five drawings. Do one with charcoal, one with watercolour, one with a pencil, one by finger painting and one with pastels. That will keep you on your toes!
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Sized canvas makes for a very satisfactory support for pastels. You will need to protect the back from possible knocks. Simpler still, why not glue the canvas to a hard support such as hardboard.
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Pastel scumbling is a pastel method of mixing colours optically. First lay down a colour and fix it with fixative. Now lightly scumble another colour over the top allowing the under colour to show through. To exploit his technique to its maximum a clever use of cool and warm colours and colours of contrasting light and dark tones should be used.
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The paper you choose for your pastel paintings is entirely of personal choice. Remember that smooth paper has little [tooth] - a papers capacity to hold pigment within its groove - and would require working in layers fixed with fixative. Pastel paintings with little tooth are ideally suited to very polished and realistic finishes. It is best to experiment as much as you can. see also art quotes, turpentine solvent and paint palette
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An artist's observational skills should be kept well oiled. It is a good idea to draw something new everyday. Try to keep more than one sketchbook for this purpose and separate them into distinct subject matter. That way it is easier to note and be encouraged by one's advancements. see also contemporary artists websites and glass for painting
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The truth is that we as humans are only limited by our capacity to see possibility and that if only we could become better at revealing possibility in the world we live in, then the more possibility there will be. Anything can spark your imagination, pebbles along the shore with their infinitely beautiful patterns, shells with their ornate finishes, driftwood with its rugged charm, even a blade of grass with its poetic simplicity. Context can also create new sensations and visual metaphors. Try picking up some random objects and look for unusual arrangements. One is reminded of a simple sculpture by Pablo Picasso, (Spanish artist 1881-1973) in which he took a bicycle seat and upturned bicycle handle bars to create a wonderfully simple and powerful sculpture of a bull's head.
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Aerial Perspective refers to the bluish and faint appearance objects take on when viewed at a distance. Think of how mountains in the distance appear fainter and tinged with blue or how on a misty day trees not far away appear a pale grey green. This is caused by the density of water vapour present in the atmosphere that has the effect of not only merging tonal contrasts by making dark tones lighter and light tones darker but also making colours appear cooler. This effect in nature can be mimicked in your paintings by making the far ground paler and bluer. See also art tips, acurate drawing and poetic meaning
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The spaces that surround the objects that we see and draw are referred to as “negative shapes” and can not only be used creatively to describe objects that we see, but should always be considered. Imagine you draw the outline of an apple on a sheet of paper and then cut out the shape of the apple along the outline. The cut out shape of the apple and the shape that is left are both perfect descriptions of the apple.
Exercise 1.
Draw an outline of the same still life and trace this through onto six separate sheets of paper. Now you can colour the negative shapes and experiment with different abstract arrangements of both the negative and positive shapes.
Exercise 2.
Take the objects you used in the still life exercise above and re-arrange them by turning some of them upside down and some on their sides. Being now in unfamiliar and unexpected positions will force you to draw shapes as you see them and not as you know them. Now without making a preliminary linear drawing of the still life, take a stick of charcoal and attempt to draw the negative shapes only. See also cause and effect and art tips
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It takes time to develop a feel for when a drawing or painting is complete and at which point to put it down. Art school students learn this lesson well through the numerous life drawing classes spent practising the one to five minute sketch. This practice is invaluable in teaching one how to adapt our technique and selective thinking. It also liberates the student from any preconceptions regarding what we actually see. An overworked drawing is a dead drawing, one that does not communicate. There will always be an innate insecurity when drawing that can compel us to continue to work past the point at which you should have stopped drawing. Try to heed any appeals to stop that you may hear!
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The greatness of a drawing is not judged by its accuracy alone but also by the manner in which you can make the drawing visually sing. Through disciplined drawing practice you will become better at representing what you see with quickly executed lines, lines that capture and communicate emotion rather than describe.
Exercise one.
Drawing pedestrians in the street is a good exercise. A window seat in a coffee shop makes a prime location. Drawing from the television is also a great exercise. Try to capture poetic movements, watch for rhythms, draw speed, draw slowness, draw awkwardness, draw age, youth, happiness, leaps, slips, running, skipping, and all the time working as quickly and spontaneously as you can. Leonard da Vinci (Italian Renaissance artist 1452-1519) suggested an oval for the head and bent lines for both the arms and legs. View also canvas art prints, art influence and the world is flat
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To avoid possible drips landing on a pastel painting when using fixative spray, pin your artists paper in an upright position rather than lay it out on the floor. Hold the fixative spray at about a foot distance from the paper and working quickly with smooth continuous sweeps from left to right and importantly from top to bottom. Ensure that each stroke does not repeat over a previous one and does not leave un-fixed areas between strokes. Remember, use it sparingly as fixative does tend to darken colors and dulls the natural beauty of the pastel. Using paper with more tooth can reduce the need to fix too often. See also artist paper, artist color and plumb line
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By applying and releasing pressure between a pencil and paper as you draw can be used to great affect to add spatial dimension in your drawings. By applying more or less pressure you create tonal variations in the line. Darker passages of line will suggest areas of greater tonal contrast and lighter passages will suggest less tonal contrast. Without the need to add any shading to define the varying planes of your subject, line alone, used expertly can achieve it for you.
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As you develop as artists you become more sensitive to imbalance in your paintings and drawing. Looking at your work in a mirror makes the spotting of weaknesses in proportion and balance evident. It is only a well proportioned and balanced compositions that will look satisfactory when viewed reversed in a mirror. Try also to position the mirror in such a way that both the subject and the mirror, and also the subject and the painting/drawing can be viewed simultaneously. If you get into the habit of checking all your preliminary drawings prior to working them up into finished paintings you can avoid tricky alterations later on. Also see contemporary artwork and brush care
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When painting a portrait make a note of where your lightest light is and where your darkest dark is. Try to set up the lighting so that there are not multiple lightest lights all competing for attention. This will contradict the correct rendering of the form and tend towards a flattening of the form and an unpleasant result. The Dutch masters of the 17th Century would often paint their portraits with one source of natural light from a window set high above the sitter. This made it easier to see the highlights, middle tone and darks, which is essential to complete the illusion of three dimensional drawing.
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A simple coloured background can be achieved with pastels by simply collecting some pastel powder and rubbing it into the paper (Lightly fix before use) Alternatively you can add some water to the pastel powder in a jar and then use it as a watercolour wash.
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Pastels can get very dirty after only short use. To clean them put them in a bag together with ground rice, give it a shake and strain through a sieve.
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Art is an experiment in how to experiment and also how to avoid falling headlong into the "pit" of aesthetic imitation and predictability! Whatever you are painting, try to imagine that it is the first time you have seen it and you should be taken to unexpected places where magic lives!
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Children’s illustrators need to develop expert figure drawing skills, as the central feature of their work is almost always a child or animal or monster.
Improving your skills at expressing human emotions in the posture and animation of the figure is the result of hours of dedicated life drawing study - there are no short cuts. If you are serious about becoming a good illustrator the best thing to do is to enrol in a life drawing class. Drawing in isolation can slow ones progress and seeing other art students at work, struggling with the same visual problems is not only very rewarding but also incredibly beneficial.
Life drawing is most often associated with the drawing of the naked human form, but with its numerous lessons in how clothes hang, the illustrator needs to practise drawing the clothed form. Also view. the world is flat, colors and wooden picture frames
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With ten of them at hand, fingers remain possibly the most readily available tool to blend pastels! Of course to keep their vibrancy pastels like all pigment need to be saved from contamination by other colours, so keep a damp cloth at hand to wipe you fingers clean between blends. You could use a Tortillon, paper rolled tightly to create a point and both toilet paper and paper hanky tissue. Remember to keep contrast of soft and hard edge alive in your paintings if you want them to sing and to create depth. An over use of blending can produce a dull and unpleasant result.
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The rubber of choice for artists is a soft playable type. The hard rubber is pretty useless apart from erasing your drawing altogether. The soft rubber is the most versatile and can be used in harmony with a pencil drawing or charcoal drawing to either pick up an individual unwanted speck of charcoal or to gently soften a pencil line. Get into the habit of using it!
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The removal of excess pastel dust from your painting should be done by holding the paper from the top and tapping it on the back. Blowing away the dust can get into the lungs and is not only harmful but creates a great mess.
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There are numerous exercises to help to train the eye to observe accurately. The best way to do this is to force the eye into situations in which the comfortable connection between its understanding of what it is seeing and what it is actually seeing is broken.
One good exercise is to hang a master drawing upside down and to copy it. Why not take an art book and try to draw all the artwork in it. Make sure it is you who is the right way up and that it is the book that is upside down!
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Disposable gloves should be considered when working with pastels or indeed oil an acrylic painting. Pigment from pastels can be absorbed through the skin, even more so when working with oils as the use of mediums can help the pigment to be absorbed quicker. Perhaps the strongest case for using disposable gloves is when handling white spirit or Turpentine, these can do nasty things to your body if ingested or absorption through the skin. Definitely use them with caution and in a well ventilated room. See also contemporary abstract art, poetic meaning and cause and effect
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There is always considerable wastage of unused paint from dried out palettes. Artists should not underestimate the possibilities of re-use of this paint. You could submerge your palette in water overnight or for days and even put it in the fridge! Or simply lightly spray it with water. Artists have been known to submerge unsuccessful paint rich paintings under water until inspiration might come to their rescue.
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If a stretched canvas has lost its drum-like tautness, you can remedy this to a point by spraying the reverse side with water. See Contemporary American artists
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"The artist's task is to create art that is more than the sum total of its parts."
"Authentic artists do not bore the public with exhibitions of their egos"
" Abstract painting serves to remind us that there is more to what we see than what we see"
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There are numerous nice little exercises that you can have fun with and that will help to improve your observational skills. Why not, Instead of looking directly at something when drawing, try drawing it but looking slightly to the left or right of it. Try looking at an object and instead of drawing it, write down as many observations you can remember about it. It is usually the large statements and not the details that ultimately help us to distinguish between things. Look at a subject and think of how to describe it using only one of its characteristics. This may be its tone, its form, a pattern, its size, or what it reminds you of, or how it sparks your imagination.
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Working with pastels can be a messy business if you do not have an organised working method. Try, for example, to put each pastel stick back into its stored position so as not to contaminate an adjacent colour. Perhaps you could hold a cloth in one hand and give each a wipe before returning them to their rightful place. Remember they are delicate little souls and you can save a lot of money by treating them with the respect and care they deserve. see also art exercise, calm art and painting composition
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When drawing or painting allow the pencil line and brush strokes to take on the direction of the form. This will help to express the form better and give a greater feeling of spatial depth to the work. As a simple exercise, draw a cube and experiment with the pencil stroke direction. Make several drawings; some where the line follows the form and others where it contradicts its direction. You will soon notice how lacking in special depth are the drawings where the direction of line and the form have not been carefully considered. View also Canvas art prints and plumb line
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Learning to represent the three dimensionality of the world as we observe it is the foundation of all artist training. To begin with the art student learns to draw and then paint, and it is the drawing skills that he obtains in his/her early training that will enrich and ultimately form the backbone of his/her paintings. It is therefore vitally important that the correct measure of discipline is applied to questions raised whilst learning to draw.
In the absence of a life drawing model one can complete the following exercise at home by stripping down to your underclothes and drawing yourself in the mirror.
Exercise
Cut 30 individual, foot long strips of narrow brown sticky tape and attach them to yourself so that they go around your limbs, for example, around your wrists, your forearms and legs. Attach some at different angles and now attempt to draw only the pieces of tape. This is a good exercise to help you to see the way in which the various structures and forms of the human form interconnect and relate to one another. It also forces ones eye to observe the world without the muddied water of our preconceptions polluting what we see. See also silhouette, painting composition and lazy mind
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The sky is blue? Skin is pink? A short while ago whilst I was admiring a Van Gogh print of his “Branches with Almond Blossom, February 1890” a friend of mine remarked that Van Gogh had got the colour of the sky wrong! It was not the blue that he considered the sky to be. This sort of preconception is born partly from a deficit in experience and understanding of the world as we perceive it but dare I say it also reveals a lack of artistic creative joy in the visual world. The world as we perceive it is not full of absolutes that one can state with any certainty, but full of possibility so we can interpret this world through the vehicle of our feelings and talent for invention.
Artists have always been at the forefront of the way we perceive the world. The Impressionists opened our eyes by painted shadows full of colour instead of dark colourless areas. So abandon you preconceptions and join in visual discovery!
The science behind the Blue sky
As sunlight enters our atmosphere it collides with oxygen and nitrogen atoms. The shortest wavelengths of colour are scattered, Violet and Blue being the shortest, so the sky appears blue/violet. The human eye is more sensitive to blue light and therefore the sky appear blue to us.
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Canvases are expensive so never throw away an old canvas, simply re-prime it with either an oil-based primer or acrylic or turn an unsuccessful painting upside down and re-use it. Under many a great master painting sleeps a previous failed painting.
Where you want a colour to sing, place its complementary color nearby. Where you want to enhance the warmth of a colour, place a cool color nearby. If you want a dark area to appear darker place a light nearby and where you wish movement to stand out, surround it by stillness. This teaches us to see color relationships, to see how everything is linked, how nothing exists in isolation. Understanding this can often help us rescue a seemingly failed work. Rembrandt was known to paint the highlights in his paintings only at the last moment, I imagine for him a moment of great joy, when that final contrast brought everything together and made the painting sing! visit also artists websites
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Always use fixative outside and not in an enclosed non-ventilated area. Fixative is noxious. Spray from left to right evenly and don’t repeat over an area. Spray directly in front of the painting and not at an angle so as to avoid blowing pastel particles away.
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Contour means "outline" and expertly used Contour lines can create the illusion of three dimensionality on a two dimensional drawing surface. Their application is easy to see in action in the drawings of Walt Disney. Well worth copying Walt Disney cartoon characters to get an idea of how they work. The best way to understand their use is to go back to basics and draw simple forms such as the cube, cone, sphere and cylinder. Having mastered them, when you move on to draw a complex form such as the human head, for example, you should start see all its features in terms of these basic forms and how Contour lines can describe the connection between one form and another. Basically Contour lines are used to describe the points and manner by which one form is connected to another, for example, how the nose connects to the forehead and cheeks, the neck to the head and the eye to its socket, etc.
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When making a drawing study of any subject the artist is in a constantly questioning state, needing to verify verticals and horizontals. The simplest method artist’s employ is to hold their pencil in a vertical or horizontal orientation at arms length. They are then able to determine all relationships in their subject to it. A more accurate method of determining a vertical can be obtained with the use of a plumb line, made by attaching a small weight to the end of a piece of string and holding that up at arms length. See also best camera, artists drawings and middle ground
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Experienced artists will often paint the middle ground in their paintings as an abbreviated silhouette. This is very effective and simulates the way the eye sees. As an exercise why not try to draw only what you see either on the horizon line or the furthest point in view. The more you look the more you will see. If all is blurred and detail impossible to make out, then represent it with shapes.
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Also known also as the Claude Glass named after Claude Lorraine 1600-82 a simplified version of black mirror can be made by painting one side of a piece of glass with either black gloss paint or varnish. When viewed in a black mirror faults in your paintings tonality become easier to spot. As all colours are equally tinged with the colour of the mirror it has the effect of creating simpler arrangements of tone and so making it evident if one colour is lighter in tone than another. You will be able to see clearly if there is unity in the light and dark masses of the painting. Although perhaps its use was more relevant to an age of painting born from Chiroscuro, it can still be a useful tool to further your appreciation of the relationship between colour and tone. Try also looking at your subject in it. See also rich painting, abstract canvas art prints and artist gloves
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Regardless if your working method is spontaneous or methodical always try to have materials ready at hand. Nothing more disruptive to the creative mind than the break in concentration and inspiration caused by having to buy or prepare your materials on the spot.
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Copying the drawings of the old masters is a great way to learn how they used studies to understand their subjects better and how through a great variety in line quality they created drawings that were alive with beauty.
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No artist has yet submitted a tip on this subject. To help build this
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No artist has yet submitted a tip on this subject. To help build this
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No artist has yet submitted a tip on this subject. To help build this
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Everything we see is conditioned by light and it's character and mood is in constant flux. It is important therefore to always consider the light conditions whilst you work as a subject may be brought to life by a timely change in light mood. Photographers are well known for waiting patiently, perhaps for hours, for the right lighting before taking a photograph. Turner (1775-1851. English Romantic landscape and marine artist) was famous for his discipline with respect to this and would sketch with watercolours in the morning, after lunch, in the afternoon and early evening. It was his depth of understanding of how the mood of light changes during the course of a day that makes his paintings so timeless and profoundly interesting.
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Lay out on a sheet of paper about fifteen matchsticks in a random distribution. Now try to see shapes in the arrangement by drawing the ends and lengths of the matchsticks to other points and lengths. This teaches you to observe how points relate to one another and also the proportions of the larger shapes that are formed.
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