Skull Part II

Today I worked on adding shading to my skull image.  Pencil is a lovely medium for adding shading.  With all the different hardnesses, it's fun to move from a harder pencil to a softer one and vice versa.  That's really the secret to creating depth in a pencil drawing.  No amount of pressing down with one pencil will create the same amount of rich darks as using even a few different pencils.  Darrel Tank uses 5 pencils (5 Pencil Method) to create depth and realism in his portraits.  Lee Hammond uses up to 12.  So far I manage to work through with as few as possible.

For this image today I only used 2 pencils (2B and 4B).  I tend to start with the softer pencils first (4B) to get a good idea of where I ultimately want the darks and lights to be.  Unfortunately you can't stay with just the one pencil without pressing really hard on the paper.  Because 4B is so soft, it tends to stay on the top of the "bumps" of the texture of the paper, leaving all the "valleys" white.  This makes an overall "grey" value.  If you press on the paper, some of the valleys will get darker, but you have now made it impossible to completely remove any of the graphite for highlights or gradation, and it creates a mark that you will see in the finished piece as "wrong".  By switching to a harder pencil (2B) you are better able to fill in the valleys without damaging the paper.

Another important tip is the "tip".  Keep the pencils as sharp as you can.  The sharper the pencil the better it can fill in the valleys.  Gradation is key to making things look 3D in any image and any medium.  To help show the roundness of a shape, it's important to have a gradual tonal shift from dark to purest white.  It's also very important to keep a light touch with the pencil.  Not so light as to leave no mark, but not so heavy as to damage the paper.  You will of course want to "lift" the pencil when grading to white and "drop" the pencil when grading to dark, but if you find you really want to press hard it's probably time to switch to a softer pencil.

You can see that I have a lot of gradation going on in my skull image.  There's also a lot of shading - even in the areas most exposed to direct light.  I find that I need this shading to help show character in the object (small bumps or grooves in the shape), so shading the entire object and then "lifting" tone with a kneaded eraser to create highlights works best for me.

I apologize for the darkened bottom right of the picture - my shadow got in the way of the shading :P, but I think you can see what's happened so far.  I'm going to move down even further in hardness of pencil next time - probably a 2H to further define and sharpen the dark areas.  I haven't decided if I want to add highlights to the eyeballs just yet.  I'm kinda liking how he's looking so far.

Kitty Complete!

I took a vacation day today as my 5 year old was home (PD day).  So I took the extra time to push things further along and finally finished the kitty image.  Well, I think it's done anyway.  I can't come up with any more damage I can do to it - so I declare it DONE!

To finish things off, I worked on the darks and lights of the fur to make it seem silky and shiny.  I was trying for very healthy and luxurious fur.  Then I sprayed the entire drawing with a workable fixative.  This allows me to work on the topmost highlights and whiskers without smudging up the work so far. (Warning about workable fixative - be sure that you are not going to want to do any more erasing on the original work as you can only add to the pic after "fixing" it.  You can erase anything you add, but nothing below that.)

So, I sprayed it thoroughly (it really sucks to think you've "fixed" a picture and then find out otherwise after the fact) and then applied the whiskers and some extra white to some of the highlights.  I haven't done the final spray to protect the image yet, but here's the finished piece:

If you'd like to see the steps it took to get to this final image, check out my past blog postings with "Kitty" titles.

Do you know anyone with a black cat that would like a drawing like this?  Or perhaps someone who really likes black cats?  Send me a message and we can talk ;)

I had some time left over so I thought I'd start tackling the skull image again.  As I said before, I was having trouble with some of the shading aspects.  I've been reading James Gurney's book "Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn't Exist" and he said that one of the best ways to deal with this type of problem is to make a maquette.  Essentially this is a model of your subject, usually made from clay or some other sculpting medium.  Since I didn't have any clay, I used some of my kids' play dough (home made):

One of the disadvantages of using play dough is that it's very soft and squishy so it doesn't hold the shape well or for long while you're holding it.  The advantage to doing a maquette, I found, was that I could see how the image should be in 3D.  It helped me make the image more accurate around the eyes and cheek bones.  I still have a bit of work to do on this one, mostly shading, but hopefully not too much more. This is what the drawing looks like now (can you see the name in the skull?):

Spring is definitely in the air in Kitchener!  I took some very nice pics of the crocuses growing in my garden and I may do a painting of one of them next.

James Gurney is the creator/author/illustrator of the Dinotopia books.  I've added Gurney's books to my recommended booklist.  If you're interested in checking out his blog, you can find it here: www.gurneyjourney.blogspot.ca/

Updating the Blog

Hello!

As you can see, I have been hard at work updating the usefulness of this blog.  I have a list of cool sites that I recommend anyone checking out.  Quite a few with *FREE* lessons for drawing and painting (I LOVE the internet!).

There is a listing of books I have used and am currently using.  I highly recommend all of them if you want to learn how to draw or paint.

I also have a new page with information on what materials I am currently working with.  I will be updating this page with pictures soon.

I hope you like the new template and organization!  Please check out the links and feel free to comment on anything you like, don't like, or recommend!

Keeping Focus...or trying to anyway

I am not a full-time working artist, though I would love to be.  I have an alternate full-time job as a food chemist during the off-shift.  I also have two small children and a husband.  I have a house and multiple projects (not art related) that also make demands on my time.  Not to mention eating, sleeping, grocery shopping, and all the other things necessary to life.

I've read the odd book here and there about commitment to one's work (which I think I have) and scheduling it into your day.  Some of them warn against the "distractors" like laundry and paying bills.  I laughed and to an extent agreed with them.  These are necessary things but they will take all your time if you let them.  But how do you manage to find time to be creative when you have millions of other demands on your time?  Do other mommy artists suffer from the same problem?  I  don't feel I have enough time for the important things in my life (this blog being a new addition to that list :) ), and my time machine has broken down again.

Prioritizing helps.  I have committed 2-3 hours, 3 days a week to what I call "art time".  This is the time I can lock myself in my "studio" and solely focus on being artistically creative.  I also spend a lot of the free time I do have (bathroom breaks, waiting in lines, etc) to come up with ideas for my "art time".  I almost always have multiple ideas to take into my studio, which I then have to break down into something I'd really like to do.  More often than not though I have multiple projects on the go.

The other thing that I find gets a lot of focus is learning about art.  In my case drawing in pencil, conte, and ink, watercolour painting, etc.  There are just too many resources out there to read from and I keep coming across more basic skills to learn.  I'm always worried that I'm missing some important skill that I should be developing.  I think it might be developing into a bad habit (who knew learning could be a bad habit?) that is distracting me from actually doing and practicing and creating.

I am always looking for new ideas and tips (another distractor I expect).  But I'd love to know that I'm not alone in this.  If you're a full or part-time artist, what do you do to keep your focus in a world of distractions?