The Rules

This is the 4th in the series entitled “Thoughtful Thursdays”.  These are reprints of articles written by me for the local newspaper called The Kaweah Commonwealth with a few modifications for a wider audience.

This was drawn using the entire range of pencils available.

There have been many art teachers in my life. Each one seems to have hard and fast rules that they insist apply to and be followed by everyone, or at least by all their students. Since I teach drawing, I understand this, but I try to clarify the reasons for my rules so that the students can decide for themselves.

One colored pencil teacher said to ALWAYS put the darkest color as the bottom layer and work up to the lightest color. (Gary Greene) Another said ALWAYS start with the lightest color as the base and then add layers in order of increasing darkness.(Ann Kullberg)  I have done both on the same drawing and gotten the same result! Other times, there is a difference, and I don’t know why.

Several colored pencil teachers have said NEVER USE BLACK. If you want darkness, build it up by layering the darkest colors. When I do that, it rarely looks dark enough but instead, looks as if I layered the darkest colors because I couldn’t find my black pencil. When asked about this bad black pencil theory, a different teacher of colored pencil simply said, “If you aren’t supposed to use black, why do they manufacture it?”

Some of the painting teachers I have listened to say “NEVER use white alone”. (What color is one supposed to use if white is the needed color??)  Most say, “NEVER use black”. I spoke to a professional painter whose paintings sell for more than my car is worth. He told me of his layering process and it included black paint!!

The best drawing teacher I ever had only let us use a 6B pencil, which is very soft and dark. We could not smear or blend with any tool, including our fingers. His premise was that if you could learn to control that one pencil, you could make any pencil do anything you wished it to do. He was right, but then it took me years to be able to use the entire range of pencils available because his idea was so deeply etched into my head.

This is a piece done under the guidance of Professor 6B.

Many of my students ask how to hold their pencils. I show them how I hold mine, and tell them to try it, and also to try anything that feels comfortable to them. As in handwriting, everyone has a different look to his drawings. The point is that there are many places in life where there are rules, but in art the only absolutes are determined by the results you desire.