The Essential Book of Drawing: A guide to creating great art

CHAPTER 1

Starting Out

Now you’ve discovered the basic tools and equipment you need on your adventure as an artist, it’s time to learn how to use them with confidence. In this chapter, you’ll find out how to hold your pencil to create different qualities of line and you’ll see how easy it is to produce patterns and shapes using combinations of lines and tones. You’ll explore the importance of lighting to create mood and atmosphere and learn how to bring your drawings to life using other media, such as charcoal, pastels and brush pens.

Keep the end of the pencil firmly tucked into the palm of your hand to do loose shading.

Holding the pencil

Whichever way you like to hold your pencil is the right way for you, but there are still some useful tips worth learning. The examples here show you how most artists hold their pencils to achieve different techniques. Practise these methods and pretty soon they will become second nature to you.

For preliminary sketches, hold the pencil lightly, halfway along its length. This keeps the drawing light and loose.

For fine and detailed work, hold the pencil in a more upright position, as if you were writing a letter.

Making your mark

Grab your pencils and try copying some of the lines shown here. This allows you to try different pencil strokes and acts as a good warm-up exercise.

Lines that define the shape of an object are called contour lines; they help to create a recognizable form.

Here are lots of examples of lines that create tone – a term that refers to the dark and light areas in your drawing (shade, if you like). Cross-hatching is the most popular way to shade. Draw a set of parallel lines then cross over them with another set; you’ve just created some tone!

Cross-hatching

Contour lines

Graduated tone

By varying the amount of pressure you apply, you can create a graduated tone. Try making some of these marks using a soft pencil, such as a 4B, first pressing down hard and then starting to reduce the pressure so that your marks go from dark to light.

Pattern, tone and decoration

Take a look at the drawings below, and you’ll see how by using a variety of the lines I’ve shown you here, you can create pattern, shape and tone in your drawings. Have fun, enjoy creating and doodling different lines. After some practice, you’ll be able to include these marks in your own drawings.

Using charcoal

Charcoal is a great medium to draw with; whether you use willow charcoal, compressed charcoal or charcoal pencils, all allow you to create subtle tones and rich dark blacks. The use of charcoal dates back thousands of years to prehistoric cave paintings. It’s a deeply rewarding medium but very messy, so experiment and become accustomed to how it handles before you start a major drawing.

For fine detail, always use the point of the charcoal or a sharp charcoal pencil. When you need to cover large areas with tone, break off a piece and use the side of the stick. You can smudge charcoal with your finger or, for more accurate blending, with a tortillon or paper stump (I call these ‘smudge tools’) in much the same way as you would use a pencil. You can lift out highlights or draw into the charcoal with an eraser, and you can even use a brush to lift off tone or add subtle highlights.

I simply break a charcoal stick in half and use the sharpest piece to draw with. To keep charcoal pencils sharp, I use a craft knife (remember to take care and always angle the knife away from your body). To get a really fine point, I gently rub and roll the end of the charcoal on a sheet of fine sandpaper. Then I clean the point with a tissue to remove any fine dust before drawing. You can buy sandpaper blocks in most art stores or just cut a sheet of fine sandpaper into strips and staple them together.

The dog’s head was drawn using the sharp end of the charcoal stick for the details and the side for the tone. The lighter tones and highlights were lifted out with a putty rubber.

I drew the figure on the right entirely with a charcoal stick and lifted out the highlights with a putty rubber.

The tree was a mix of charcoal stick, pencil and tortillon, while a putty rubber shaped the clouds.

The old man was drawn with charcoal pencil, smudged with a finger.

For the pig, I used a charcoal stick and spread some tone with my finger.

I drew the bald man with a charcoal stick and developed the subtle shading by adding tone with the tortillon.

Light and shade

The area where light hits your subject matter most strongly is called your highlight. The side of your subject that faces away from the light is your shadow. In between the highlight and shadow is an area of graduated mid-tones. When light hits the surface next to the subject it creates an area of reflected light, which bounces back on to the subject to produce a patch of lighter tone in the dark-toned area.

The mood of your drawings is affected by the direction of light and how strong or weak the light is. By changing the position of your light source, you can communicate a very different mood and emotion to your viewer.

Light brings your drawings to life and creates a three-dimensional result. You can decide whether to leave your subject lurking in the shadows or bring it into the open in bright light.

Here are three drawings of the same girl, with the same expression. The first shows the light source coming from the side, the second shows the light source coming from above and the third has the light source coming from below. You can see how the mood and expression seem to change.