PREPARATION METHODS and the secret ingredient

Transcription

1 WEEK 7 PREPARATION METHODS and the secret ingredient First, let s dispel two myths: Tracing is cheating Artist Bradley Schmehl stated: "If you can draw well, tracing won t hurt; and if you can t draw well, tracing won t help." But it s harmful if it turns you into a human photocopier - it cheats you, the artist, of your creativity. Gridding is deceitful Grids and tracing paper, said artist Jim Hicks can help you determine the exact space between things but they won t teach someone how to draw I wish it were that simple, because when I had people waiting for me to draw their portraits, it would have been nice to just hand them some tracing paper and say "Hey this is the secret thing I do. I ve been cheating. Now you can do it yourself. They re both correct those methods, and others like them, produce guidelines and not finished artwork artwork that contains your vision. Artists have always used all the tools at their disposal for producing good working drawings on which they based their final studies. For centuries artists have employed tools such as drawing grids, tracing, the camera lucida and camera obscura, pantographs, mirrors and lenses, measuring guides and, more recently, photo references and projection. Albrecht Dürer and his contemporaries revelled in their new drawing engines as they explored perspective and foreshortening. English portrait artist Joshua Reynolds employed a later development of the camera obscura - a closed box with an external translucent screen. Artists and sculptors employ the same methods today, as well as the use of projectors, the assistance of computers, and many other modern technical aids. These tools produce nothing more than basic line drawings that children can colour in, or in which we artists can work our magic. In fact, copying is an essential process in the creation of art but it should not focus just on reproducing a specific outline it involves too the transference of ideas, treatments, and emotions and dreams, as you will learn this week. 1

2 COPYING AND BEYOND When working from a photograph there is often a need to enlarge the image, or a selected portion of it, to a workable size. That copy of outline and key features may suffice in the early days of your artistic development, but a time will arrive when you realise that there are other requirements present the desire to show your own feelings towards the subject, to display emotion, or enhance character. You may even wish to alter the physical appearance, and perhaps amalgamate various aspects of a number of photographs or other sources into a single study. All of these require methods of physically resizing and manipulating the available source material. The methods are many and varied freehand, gridding, projection, to name a few and, as with other aspects of your art, you need to be aware of them all and employ those that best suit you. In practice, the better you can draw without these tools, the better you can draw with them. In any case the ultimate goal is to reproduce the animal, person or object, not just its geometric shape, and you need to find your own preferred route. The tools you use to get there are your own concern. Use what works best for you. If you disagree with the use of a particular tool, don t use it, but don t question the motives of those that do. There are no rules governing Art. THE GRID METHOD Grids, continued Jim Hicks are great for finding out exactly how much space your drawing will take up. That way you know ahead of time exactly how the composition is going to fit on your paper. In fact, gridding is a far more versatile and useful tool than most books and tutorials explain. As you will see: It rids the brain of its naming habit and reduces elements to pure line line that can be explored to gain its true course and not that imposed by the mind. It removes all tone and lighting breaking a subject down into its constituent parts so you, the artist, can impose your own rules. It provides accuracy of placement where accuracy is critical, and also presents a framework that you can accept or modify at will. It allows you to explore, practice and learn different techniques without first having to learn to draw by eye a skill that is easier to master once the eye has learned to see line in its purity. When you simply copy a line passing through a square, ignoring the object it represents, you will be using and recognising Negative Space, which will increase your eye s ability to draw what you see. 2

3 The basics Gridding combines two operations; it can accurately transfer a drawing from one surface to another and, if you need to, it offers the opportunity to alter its size. The method consists of two grids built of squares. If the squares of both grids are of equal size, the drawings will be the same size too. If the squares on your drawing paper are twice the size of those on your source image the result will be a copy twice the size of the original. And that, you ll be happy to learn, completes the complicated mathematics of the system! When sizing-up from a sketch you can lightly draw a grid of regular lines directly on to it. For photographs or anything else that you don t want to physically mark, you can use a suitable fine pen to draw your grid on an acetate sheet. Alternatively, you can produce an accurate grid in any computer drawing program and print that directly onto acetate. The size of the squares is not critical although they must be square, and the smaller they are the more accurate will be your copy. A grid of ½-inch (1cm) squares is usually adequate for a 6 4 (15 x 10cm) photograph. The acetate method is preferable as you have a permanent, ready-to-hand grid for all occasions. Let s call this the source grid, and the one you re going to copy your drawing into, the copy grid. It will help if you identify the squares along both sides you could, for example, use numbers for each square down the left side and letters for the top. Do this to both the source and copy grids to help you keep track of where you are. Source grid on acetate laid over sketch or photograph. Copy grid lightly drawn onto the final drawing surface. Step 1: Lay your source grid over your sketch or photograph. It s important that any major feature does not occupy a single square. If an eye, for example, fits entirely within one square, move the grid so that it s split between two or more squares. By cutting everything up with the grid you ll find you are just copying a line in a box and not the lower edge of that eye. Now count and write down the numbers of squares across and down that cover your sketch or photograph. 3

4 Step 2: For simplicity let s enlarge the drawing so the copy is double the size of the source image. If your source grid has ½ (1cm) squares, your copy will need a grid of 1 (2cm) squares. Take your sheet of paper, and mark the top at 1 intervals until you have the same number of divisions as the squares you counted on your source grid, then repeat along the bottom edge. Perform the same exercise down both sides. Lightly, so you can erase them later, connect the marks to produce your grid of squares a soft grade, such as 2B, will erase more easily than a hard grade. Next lightly number and letter the squares of your copy grid to match your source grid. Step 3: Now carefully copy the lines or outlines in each square of the source grid into the corresponding square on the copy grid. Do this one square at a time, concentrating on the line (or edge of a shape, if it s a photograph) without paying any attention to what the line represents. Tell yourself This line begins a quarter of the way down the left hand edge of this square and goes to a point almost at the bottom of the right hand side. That line can be part of an arm, a coffee pot, an aircraft, a dog s tail it doesn t matter, it s just a line that you are copying. This way you learn to draw and see what is really there. Don t rush it - take your time. EXERCISE 1 It s important for this course that you understand the principle of gridding. Let s keep this exercise short and sweet by restricting it to a single square. Use your 2B pencil and press quite hard, as it will scan or photograph more easily. Draw a 2 (5cm) box It may help to mark the mid- and quarter-points of each side before you begin. Now copy just the central square above, line-by-line, into your box. Please complete Exercise 1 now, before you read further. 4

5 EXERCISE 2 It s time to dive into the deep end! Below is the drawn result of the gridding of the eye above. Notice that changes have been made during the drawing process guidelines are guides, not compulsory route maps! Prepare a grid of any size you choose. To maintain the size use a 3 x 3 (7.5 x 7.5cm) grid with 1 squares. Please use heavy 2B lines so they scan clearly. You can print out a copy on page 13 without the superimposed grid if you prefer. Imagine you were about to draw this dog s face. What features do you think you should retain? Those features need marking; others can be drawn spontaneously. Are there any potentially important lines running through the hair? Squinting often helps to identify these so you can mark their positions. 1. Copy the outline of the eye and its major internal features. 2. Mark the outline and position of all the external features. Clue: There s an important but subtle line in the shadows curving up from just above the eye s left corner to the top of the top-centre box. You already know all the basic techniques so think about how you might tackle this drawing. Look for features that you want to include in your interpretation of the photograph, and the ones that will keep you on course. When you re working on a small area at a time, it s not uncommon to lose your way. The little features you pick out and mark now are the signposts you can use to get back on track. Do not erase your grid lines before sending your scan to Drawspace. The chief advantage of gridding is the breaking down of everything into line, with accurate results, and the ability to follow an edge without recognising what it belongs to. Whatever you do, don t be tempted to just copy the picture over the top of the grid you will simply cheat yourself out of learning a valuable lesson. You might not appreciate that right now but we haven t yet explored all the magical advantages! Please complete Exercise 2 now, before you read further. 5

6 THE TWO-STEP METHOD If you are enlarging a photograph to a relatively large size, four or even eight times its size for example, you will find it simpler and more manageable to enlarge it in two stages from 1cm to 2cm then again from 2 to 4 cm. Trying to enlarge a small photograph by too large a factor in one step is fraught with problems and probable inaccuracies. And, as you are about to learn, you should do this in any case THE UNTOLD SECRET OF GRIDDING Many books and tutorials teach gridding at a very early stage, but it s far too important to be learned until you at least know the basic techniques of drawing. Gridding essentially breaks down your three-dimensional reference into a featureless two-dimensional set of lines. It s here that you inject the magic your vision of what the subject will become. From this point onwards the reference ceases to be influential and the image becomes yours! This is true of every drawing, even if it is a portrait, so it is essential that you sizeup or copy in two stages with a special stage in between. Follow these steps and, once you appreciate their importance, you ll raise your work to a new level in no time at all: First translate your photograph into a larger (if required) line drawing. Insert magic here Then copy the line drawing (or size it up again) to the final paper surface. That middle stage gives you the opportunity to make alterations. If you are drawing a dog, for example, this is the ideal time to incorporate changes of expression, open or shut the mouth, or move the awkwardly lolling tongue. Often essential detail is missing in a photograph so, instead of guessing what that dog s nose really looks like, or just copying what you see in the photograph, now you can find other photographs, book illustrations or even a dog to help you rebuild that area. Using this stage to identify any problem areas and find solutions will ensure your final drawing stays sharp and clean. As the first stage has removed all three-dimensional shading, you can now easily dictate the lighting the way you want it to be. This is essential if you are combining a number of photographs to compose a scene. You might also add a suggestion of how the shading will conform to the lighting direction shorthand hatch marks that will carry your ideas forward to the final paper. By the time you ve finished it will no longer be a copy of the photograph it will be your creation. And your understanding of your subject will have greatly increased. 6

7 DRAWING FROM LINE TO LIFE Beginners Course REVIEW Faithfully copying a reference photograph is an excellent strategy for practicing techniques, as you have an image against which you can judge your result. However, you will be repeating the vision of the photographer and not injecting anything of yourself into your drawing. Even the lighting will be predetermined. It s like learning a poem by rote - your completed drawing may be a technical wonder but from an artistic viewpoint it has nothing new to say. You can best avoid these problems by using the two-step method to introduce the intermediate stage. We ve been studying gridding as the source of the method s Stage 1, but it can equally be the result of projection, drawing from life, or any other process that can reproduce your subject in a small but workable size. Now, before you progress to Stage 2, make the line drawing yours. Establish your lighting scheme, alter or enhance the expression, tidy loose hairs or introduce new ones to add vitality. You can adapt and fine-tune as you draw, and you can even revert to the original appearance. As you will be working from that original sketch or photograph you can re-establish any aspect of it at any time but now it s purely your choice. There are more reasons for adopting the two-step process too OPTICAL ILLUSIONS and other problems If it s your custom to draw exact copies from photographic references then you are inviting constant problems. You ll be incorporating camera lens distortion, zoom lens depth-of-field compression, burnt out highlights, and weird optical illusions. Using the two-step process allows you the freedom to observe your reference at leisure for such faults. The photograph below displays two unfortunate but typical and completely natural faults and illusions. Neither aberration is something you would ever want to include in your drawing. See if you can discover them before you go to the next page. 7

8 DRAWING FROM LINE TO LIFE Beginners Course First, look at the street lamp at the left-hand side. It s leaning to the left and needs to be correctly returned to a vertical position. If you draw it in its current alignment, it may attract attention away from more important elements. Have you noticed the other, more major, fault? This one is even more unsettling! Half close yours eyes and look again. Your brain is perfectly capable of understanding green amorphous shapes as being parts of trees, but the one thing it cannot make sense of is the presence of straight lines. They just don t fit into the tree recognition program at all. In fact this fault will read more correctly as a major crease in your drawing paper! Even though it s naturally formed by the shadows within the masses of leaves, and the angled edge of the bush behind the railings that distracting line has to go! Such problems are more common than you might imagine and, if carried through to a drawing, will forever present a disturbing influence. EXERCISE 3 Remember in Week 1 when I said I would sometimes throw you in at the deep end? Well, that time has arrived! This is a gridding exercise that you need to take some care over, as will become evident next week, when you begin to draw it. On the next page you ll find a full-size version to which you can apply your grid. Does it look daunting? No? Good! However, next week we ll be adding a couple of objects to it, but don t worry there won t be anything in the final image that we have not already covered, or have not leaned how to break down and simplify. You can do it! 8

9 This corner of our kitchen dresser is the setting for our final drawing, which will be 11cm x 15cm the size shown here, so you won t need to enlarge it, unless you want to. But I know what s coming so I d think twice about making it any bigger! Draw an 11 x 15 cm box on a spare piece of paper, not on your drawing paper yet, and use a grid to transfer this photograph to it. You ll find a copy on the next page with a 2cm grid overlay on it. 9

10 Image with grid 2cm squares First, notice that the squares in the right-hand column and bottom row are not squares at all. In this case we know the existing size (11 x 15 cm) and we know the final size needs to be the same, which means our source grid (above) and our copy grid must also be the same size. If we wanted to increase the size by 1½ times, we would simply use our source grid of 2cm squares with a copy grid of 3cm squares. You could use smaller source squares but a size of 2cm is perfectly satisfactory for this project. Print out the previous page and use an acetate grid, or this page with the pregridded photograph. Whichever you choose, you must place or draw a complete square in the top-left corner, so that any partial squares appear at the right hand side. And you must do the same with your copy grid, so both grids match. 10

11 Draw the copy grid on a spare sheet of paper (not on your final drawing paper). Then, square by square, copy the photograph of the dresser with a 2B lead so it can be erased. There is no need to draw everything just edges, and outlines of features that will keep you keep on course as you later draw this image. When completed do NOT erase your grid. Keep it simple. This photo-to-line party trick in Photoshop might help you decide what to include. FINALLY When you ve completed exercise 3, hold on to it we ll be adding extra features to it next week before we begin drawing. 11

12 WHAT TO SEND IN THIS WEEK Exercise 1 Your copy of the central box in the grid. Exercise 2 The result of mapping the photograph of the dog s eye and surrounding features to pure line in your grid. Pay particular interest to the surrounding features many previous artists on this course haven t! Those features are less obvious than those in the eye but are more important signposts when drawing begins. Exercise 3 The result of using your grid to convert the photograph of the old dresser to pure line, keeping the size to 11 x 15cm (about 4½ x 6 ). Do not erase your grid lines. Next week This final drawing will complete the course and should help you to combine images from different sources. We re going to add two elements from photographs taken at a different time and location, and in different lighting conditions. You can discover the power of two-stage gridding for yourself, and don t worry assistance will be with you all the way. Have fun! Cheers. Copyright: All text, images and exercises included in this course are the sole copyright of Mike Sibley 2009 and revised No reproduction for commercial purposes, in whole or part, will be permitted under any circumstances. Applying for written permission from Mike Sibley may permit extracts for display or promotional purposes only. Mike@SibleyFineArt.com Website: Drawing from Line to Life: Videos: 12

13 13