Fast or Good?

My drawing students are used to hearing me tell them, “You can be fast or you can be good; I get to be both.” Everyone still laughs, in spite of the obnoxiousness of the second part.

This is an indisputable truth, when it comes to the highly detailed, accurate type of drawing that I teach.

Alice worked on a drawing of her Desert Painted Sheep, nicknamed “Oughtie”, for several years. (Hey Alice, I didn’t mean THAT S L O W!) But things take as long as they take*. She was very meticulous about every shape, every texture, every value, and she did a fantabulous job.

I didn’t take any photos of the process, or more accurately, I don’t remember if I took any photos of the process. We discussed various background ideas, tried some different textures, and ultimately, she decided that the drawing is finished.

During the process, I learned that goats’ tails go up and sheeps’ tails go down. She made some good friends to play pickleball with. (My drawing students have varied interests and are some of the nicest people you could ever spend time with.)

Here is the final outcome, scanned, but not yet scrubbed up with Photoshop (the junior version).

The artist forgot to sign the drawing before she sent it home with me to scan, so she emailed me a few signatures. I chose one and placed it on the scrubbed-up scan.

My classes are full but you are welcome to get on a waiting list. If there are four people waiting who can all meet at 1 p.m. on Tuesday afternoons, I will add that 1 p.m. class.

*How’s that for a quotable truth?

Two Drawings, Mine and Someone Else’s

Hers

A drawing student brought in a photo she had taken, a challenging choice for a beginner. I tell my students, “Pick something you love, because you will be looking at it for a long time”. She loves this scene and worked very diligently. 

This is the result of her labors, and I think she did a wonderful job! (I removed her name because she didn’t ask to be on the World Wide Web, and I didn’t ask her permission.)

This is how it looks after I’ve photoshopped it for reproduction purposes, in case my student wants to have copies or cards printed.

Mine

For about five years, I have been working with a writer on a book about tuberculosis. It began as a local story about the TB hospital in Springville (here in Tulare County). When he started researching, the story grew into a different book, a massive project. Through it I have learned much more than I ever expected about “the white plague”, as opposed to “the black plague” (both of which refer to skin color associated with the disease, not race, so no need to get your knickers in a twist.)

The author came to me initially for some drawings for the Springville book, and upon further discussion, hired me to edit for him. We are finally reaching the end of the main text and are now gathering appropriate illustrations.

He couldn’t find a good photo of Virginia Poe (wife of Edgar), so he asked me to draw her from a rather gruesome photo (or painting?) taken shortly after she assumed room temperature.

Are you properly horrified? This fits with Edgar Allan Poe’s writings, doesn’t it? I haven’t read his work, but I learned plenty about him through the process of assisting with the writing of this book. I’ll stick with modern writers for my fiction.

Meanwhile, I think the background needs a little bit more work.

Okay, all better now. I also remembered to sign the drawing. 

 

 

How to Draw With Graphite and Colored Pencils, Ch. 4

Conclusion of the graphite portion of the pencil drawing

Today we will conclude the graphite part of the drawing tutorial. Tomorrow I will take you on a walk, or a cruise around the yard, or something to give your overworked minds a break from the minutia of pencil drawing. If you haven’t unsubscribed by Monday, you will see the steps of adding color to the drawing, last seen looking like this:

Step twelve: It is time to make a decision about the door and the shutters. In the photo, they are green and brown, and these shades are the same value (the same shade of gray if we turn the photo to black and white). I decided that the brown would be darker than the green when I did the shutter on the left. Now I want to be consistent with the green door and other green shutter, deciding which is darker and where it is darker, but in general, keeping the green lighter than all the brown. The way I do this is to only use 2B instead of 4B in the darkest cracks and for the darker edges, and do the bulk of the shading with HB. As I worked on the shutters and the door, the chair got smeary. I keep erasing it and cleaning its edges because it needs to be clean paper in order to take the colored pencil well later.

NOTES ABOUT FIXING AS YOU GO: As I shade, I find layout lines that need to be adjusted or erased. So, I take care of those as I find them while I am inching across the drawing.

Step thirteen: Moving across the rest of the scene, I am ignoring the picnic table because it seems like a giant So What, unless I figure out how to put a place setting, a mug, a book, a something on it. I allowed stroke marks show on some of the wood, always going with the direction and appropriate length of the wood grain. In this window, I started with 4B, added 2B, and finished off with B, leaving a few places without pencil. Then I used the tortillon to smooth it. This time I left a little bit of paper color and also sort of followed the shapes that appeared in the photo for a hint of what is inside the cabin. After blending it with the tortillon, I added HB to the darker places to make them even darker.

Step fourteen: A book on the table, but some confusion about what is beneath the table structurally. So, I will skip this for a bit and move next to the floor of the porch instead. Sometimes procrastinating gives my brain an opportunity to find a solution.

NOTES ABOUT CONFUSION: Even when working from one’s own photo, there are always areas of blurriness or seemingly irrelevant information. In spite of using a photo, some things just don’t make sense, so we have to make up things, cover them with darkness, or grow a shrub over the top.

Step fifteen: Because I have changed the perspective on this picture, the floor boards will be parallel to the horizontal edge of the drawing. Here is the photo again so you can see the how they slope upward to the right:

This is easy to do using my T-square, and I will guess the distances between the boards, simply eyeballing it and figure that closies count here (like horseshoes and hand grenades). Although I drew the lines using a straight edge, these boards are old and worn, so as I shade using a B, HB, and 2H, I made them a bit rough along the edges.

As I worked on the boards, my hand would have been resting on some of the completed parts of the drawing, so I put a piece of paper down to rest my hand on.

Step sixteen: All that is left to shade in pencil is the mysterious lower left corner. First, I looked at the uncropped photo to see if anything helped to explain the blobs: hmmm, some sort of legs. I could either make it all super dark (In which case I am telling my viewers, “Sorry, it was all in shadow, can’t be helped!”) or copy the blobs as I see them. This is the sort of problem that occurs when working with a photo one hasn’t taken oneself. Ahem. I think I did take this photo (unless Tracy or Dan did —thank you!), and I have actually sat at that table. But I have slept since then. . . End of excuses. I just picked up a 2B and started shading exactly what I saw, because unless it is really weird and distracting, nobody will notice or care.

Step seventeen: that lower left corner looked ugly. The bottom left corner was very light on the photo, and that didn’t look right either. So I just darkened the whole mess, burying it in 4B. And honestly, I was losing focus after drawing, scanning, and writing about it for 5 hours, so I just might have been getting careless and sloppy.

The final steps of the graphite portion of the drawing: erasing the margins, making sure there was zero pencil on the chair, looking at everything under that giant magnifying glass on my drawing table*, and then spray-fixing it with Blair Matte Spray Fix. This means (in theory, but sometimes not in reality and I don’t know why not) that you can still draw on the piece but nothing will either smear or erase. Yes, the spray stinks.

HOLY GUACAMOLE! I did this entire drawing without knowing where my real eraser is. I used the kneadable and the Tombow Mono Zero, a tiny eraser in a pen-like holder. It is best to be sure there are no pens lying around to be grabbed by accident when you use one of these—one of my drawing students did that once. Still, I sure would like to know where my Staedtler Mars white plastic eraser is hiding.

Oh for Pete’s sake. As soon as I unwrapped the stubborn cellophane off a new eraser, I looked in another pencil mug on the drawing table, and there was my old eraser. Were there trolls messing around in my studio over Christmas??

Next, we will add color. Nope, I don’t have a mouse in my pocket. This is the royal we speaking.

*See the giant magnifying glass? Also, note the mug of tea. NEVER do this. 

How to Draw With Graphite and Colored Pencils, Ch. 3

Today we continue the tutorial that takes you step by step through drawing with pencil and eventually, colored pencil.

EDGES OR OUTLINES? Real life has edges; coloring books and cartoons have outlines.  Rather than separate items with a black line, use different shades of gray. It is a constant questioning: is this darker or lighter than the thing it touches? Sometimes it will change as you move through a particular area—within a particular item, it can be against something lighter in one place and something darker in another.

Step eight: Keep layering. I used 4B for the shadows of the battens above the door, and added 2B on top of the 4B and over the boards and battens. You can see that this little area isn’t as dark as its neighbor on the left.

Step nine: I continued on the upper board and batten section, and this time added HB on top so it matches the previous shaded areas. I also placed the erasing shield over the top of these parts and erased my jagged lines that went over the border.

MORE NOTES: There are many little finessing techniques that I do automatically and if I called them all out and scanned each one, it would be 2026 before you read this tutorial. A few of those techniques are (1) erasing little pieces that cross over into other territory; (2) darkening areas slightly in order to separate them from their neighbors; (3) ditto #2, but lightening, sometimes tapping gently with an eraser; (4) using a straight edge to clean up edges.

ANOTHER NOTE ABOUT TOOLS: With old buildings like cabins, I first use a straight edge to draw a line, but when shading, I do it freehand so there is a touch of wobble, which gives the look of age and wear (sort of like my face these days).

Step ten: The window started with some 4B, then 2B, then B (yep, a new pencil I hadn’t used yet) over all the glass. I am just pantsing this part because I think the photo has some unimportant specifics, and I’d rather put my efforts into the parts that matter, things that are identifiable.

NOTES ABOUT COLOR: When working from a colored photo, you have to decide which colors are darker and which are lighter. We don’t use black outlines in realistic drawing, so the different colors in real life are depicted by different degrees of darkness in a monochromatic drawing (single color, in this case gray) called “values” in Art Speak. I choose to work from colored photos instead of converting to black and white because it sharpens my ability to see the values; it also helps me know when 2 items of the same value are actually 2 separate items and not one indiscernible blob of gray.

Step eleven: I decided that the glass on the windows looks too fuzzy, grainy, textured, so I used a tool called a tortillon, which is sort of a paper “pencil”, to smear and blend things. A Q-tip, tissue, or your finger will also do the trick.

MORE NOTES ABOUT VALUES: When one item is on top of another item of the same color, the one behind will be slightly darker where the two meet. That’s the way to separate them without the dreaded outline. 

Tomorrow: chapter 4, in which we complete the graphite portion of the drawing.

How to draw with graphite and colored pencils, Ch. 1

My colored pencil artist friend Carrie Lewis asked me to write a tutorial, showing the steps of completing a drawing with pencil and colored pencil. 

I said, “How do I do that?” 

She offered to type while I talk through the steps, but I realized we’d have to be on the phone for about 8 hours. 

So, I chose a photo, started drawing, photographing the steps, and writing about it. Well, yes, sort of, sort of not.

The first session was confusing. I took notes, was sure I’d remember what they meant in order to transcribe them later. 

I photographed a few things, and also scanned the drawing as I went along, but then it was tricky to figure out which order all the pictures went in. Then, I realized there is a lot of information that doesn’t fall in line with the steps.

I’ve decided to post the whole tutorial here on my blog, in 5 chapters. Maybe we can tighten it up together.

How to draw with pencils (and later, add some color) 

The first four steps

Step one: Choose your photo. I chose this because the red chair is a good candidate to be drawn in colored pencil, with everything else in graphite. You can just tint things at the end of a drawing or you can choose a specific item to do in full color. I prefer the latter method.

Step two: crop the photo. Beginners often feel chained to exactly what is in front of them. Over time and with experience, we learn what matters and what doesn’t, and eventually decide that we are the boss of our own artwork.

TOOLS: I use the items in the photo, working at a slanted drafting table. T-square, ruler (with picas so I don’t have to deal with fractions), drafting brush, erasing shield, calculator, pencil sharpener that catches its own crumbs, and Tombow pencils, from 4B to 2H, along with a couple of erasers that don’t show. I prefer the Mars white plastic, but seem to have lost mine. Because I began drawing so lightly, the kneadable eraser works, but it is too ugly to photograph. (It looks like gray chewed gum, gross.)

Step three: draw the borders, making a size that is proportional to the photo. Measure, use math, eyeball it—whatever works best for you. I measure and use tools. It is always best to have margins, so you don’t view the edge of your paper as the edge of your drawing. If you misjudge sizes while drawing, this will give your drawing room to grow. It also prevents a signing or framing problem, should you decide to get it framed. I draw the border with a sharp point on an HB, using a very light touch. I might want to move the border later, draw exactly up to it, or draw over it without it showing through.

Step four: Start figuring out where things are going to go. Look for the main items, in this case, the door and the chair. Draw very very lightly. My lines barely show, so I darkened the lines (just on the photo using my scanner) in order for you to see them.

DISCLAIMER: I chose to alter the picture, to appear as if we are looking straight on the scene rather than from an angle. In most pictures, vertical is always vertical. It is the horizontal surfaces and lines and edges that disappear off toward vanishing points. However, I decided to keep the horizontals and verticals all true to a straight on view rather than slightly angled, as the photo shows. THIS IS REALLY HARD TO DO WHEN YOU ARE STARTING OUT, so you will have less trouble if you just stick to the photo.

Tomorrow: the next steps.

Another Emailed Drawing Lesson

Remember Buck, AKA Mr. Curly? C and I are continuing to work on him via email. She is a remarkably clear communicator, so this is working out well for us. She had specific questions, which always makes it easier to offer instructions.

This is how he looked when we last saw him. I sent her written instructions that corresponded to each colored oval.

This is the most recent iteration of Buck, complete with more colored ovals.

1. The upper neck/mane: You were right about this area. (She had circled it, said it looked wrong and asked about a particular fix.) If you study this area on the drawing versus the photo (I recommend upside down), you will see that the mane sort of curves downward into the neck. Hmmm, words aren’t working. Let me show you.
2. My blue circle: At the intersection of the leg and chest, that slight corner needs to be higher. Look at the photo to see EXACTLY where it lines up with the nostril. Essentially, you will be lengthening the leg by making that intersection a bit higher. Look at it all upside down to re-examine the shape between the face and chest. (A tiny thing that might not matter, but I am scratching around, looking for answers).
 
3. Red circle: study the photo to see where the nostril/cheek indentation and the neck intersect. (Another tiny thing that might not matter but try it just in case. . . )
 
4. Purple circle: All of this area needs to be much darker with the segments less defined because they are in shadow. The exception – keep this little bump light.
 
Does this all sound like gobbledygook to you? Good thing C and I have been working together for a couple of years, because it does make sense to her. 

Electronic Drawing Lesson with Buck

Remember my drawing student, C? She and I have been doing drawing lessons through email since last year. I haven’t updated you on her pencil drawing of a horse named Buck, whom I referred to for awhile as Mr. Curly.  I have been posting about other things, while C has been working diligently.

The last time I showed you:

 

The mane is looking great. She has now begun “undercoating”, just laying down pencil for a base coat while she waits for me to tell her something helpful. I actually had very little to say because she is doing a great job on her own.

This is what I told her:

1. Yellow: the cheek sticks out a bit too far. I noticed because his face seems noticeably curvy in your drawing. This made me check the photo, and when I put a box around the area on the drawing and one around it on the photo, I could see the drawing had a wider box. Just carve off a little of the cheek by widening the mane on the right side of the cheek. A fraction ought to do the trick.
 
2. Orange: blur the edge between the dark and the light of this area so it looks like something is changing color instead of being 2 separate pieces ofnthe face/nose.
 
3.  Green: Obviously you aren’t finished with this yet so this is just a heads-up to be sure to have the dark parts of the coat much darker than the bright-light parts. There is a ton of contrast in the photo, which is part of the appeal.
 
GOLD STAR FOR YOU!! 
 
Here is her original photo so you can see what I am referring to:

And if you would like to see the previous posts about virtual drawing lessons with C, here is the list. (Each link will open in a separate tab so you don’t lose this page.)

Previous Lessons

The beginning

Lesson 2

Mr. Curly Becomes Buck (lesson 3)

Lessons via email (lesson 4)

Soldiering on (lesson 5)

It is possible I missed a link to a post; it is more possible that I just didn’t keep you all current.

Soldiering on with Drawing Lessons via Email

C sent me this, requesting help with some specific areas.Oh how I wish we were together in person! But my o-so-wise dad taught me this: “If you put a wish in one hand and spit in the other, which hand actually contains something?” So we shall soldier on.

First, I did this:

Then I wrote up these notes:

P.S. It costs a fortune to have a transplant, and while insurance covers much, there is much more that it does not cover. If you feel generous and inclined to help my friend, Rachelle, this is the best way to do so: HelpHopeLive.Org

Drawing Buck

My drawing student C and I continue to work on her pencil drawing of the horse, Buck. This last time she took a photo of the drawing instead of scanning it. I tried to help and was able to show her how to put a lock of hair across the eye. She also asked me about her hair shading techniques, and after staring at it a bit, I finally concluded that it was all too squarified for me to tell what was pencil and what was pixel.

Here is what I told her in the email (because I think my writing is a little bit too sloppy):

“About the hair crossing over the eye: The question to be answered is always: Which is darker? sometimes the only way to tell is to squint at the photo so the detail and color blur. Another way is to turn your photo to black and white, but this sort of feels like cheating. Well, not cheating, but bypassing the ability to learn to see values by letting the computer do the work. Often the black and white method backfires, because the 2 things are the same value (darkness). This means you get to decide (you are the boss of your picture.)
 
“The hair is darker in some places and lighter in others. Just make the adjustments to whatever is behind the little clumps so that it shows up. It is okay for the clumps to look broken or disconnected.
 
“Hair always tapers at the tips.
 
“I can’t help you on the shading; because of the pixelation, it is too hard to tell what you have actually done and what is getting squarified. 8-( 
 
“You can either keep going and then scan it, or you can rescan this and I can keep going here!”
 
So, this lesson is on hold for a bit.
My show “Still Here” is still there, at Arts Visalia, that is. The phone # to make an appointment to see it is 559-739-0905. Gallery hours are Wednesday through Saturday, noon-5:30. The last day to see my work there is Friday, April 30.

 

Mr. Curly Becomes “Buck”

In the ongoing virtual drawing lessons, (actually happening via email rather than Zoom or video) the horse that my student C is drawing has a name, and it isn’t Mr. Curly; the name is Buck. This reminds me of a scene in a Chronicles of Narnia movie (one of the few movies I have seen or actually remember anything) of one of the kids riding a horse. He says to the horse, “Giddy-up, Horsie.” The horse turns his head back a bit and says in a very disgusted and dignified voice, “The name is Phillip.”

Please excuse the digression.

C sent me her drawing with the eyes completed. I circled one eye in red, then wrote up the notes demonstrating the next steps. I hope you can read my writing. But perhaps you don’t care, and only came to look at the photos.