A Drawing in Progress

After several weeks of posts on composition, I thought I’d take a break and just draw.  I haven’t posted a video in a long time.  Those of you who followed the blog last year may remember I did short videos to illustrate discussion points.  I’d like to occasionally throw in a video of a drawing in progress, so I’m going to experiment with how this might work.

The trick is: how to do a complete drawing on a short video?  I’ll try a quick drawing on a small piece of paper – 4″ x 6″.    I’m working from a photo I took on a trip to Vancouver Island a couple years ago.

Using paper this small, I decide to focus on one building.   My approach will be the same as if I was sitting at the scene. After the initial pencil lay-in to located the subject on the paper, I do a basic line drawing in ink with a Pigma Micron 005 pen.  Alas, I didn’t know the battery died half way through the video, but there’s enough here to give the idea.

Once the line drawing is complete, I add a tone of lines over the areas of the design that represent the lower values. This  way I can get a sense of the overall composition and balance.   After that, I go in and build up these darker areas and add details.  On a drawing this small, it’s possible to use just four values to render a fairly realistic image – not unlike the thumbnail sketches (which are even smaller) that I do to prepare for a  painting.

And of course, adding color always helps.

For the past few months I’ve been posting small drawings – more carefully rendered – on Daily Paintworks for sale at a very special price.  Check it out if you would like to see more examples of small scale drawings.

Next week, back to composition – I have a few more tidbits to share before moving on to other topics.  If you have drawing subjects or questions you’d like me to cover, please feel free to use the comment box or send me an email.  I’d be happy to respond.