Month: July 2022

In this one-off session, I’ll be showing you how to use the concept of negative space to help improve your observational drawing skills.

You can download the reference here: http://drawandpaint4free.artcoursework.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/IMG_0547-scaled.jpg

Process

• Start with a rectangle that matches your subject.
• Then lightly sketch in any of the shapes that surround the subject.

• Make sure that you focus on the shape itself and not the subject. This is how you draw the negative rather than the positive parts of the drawing.
• Once you have the negative shapes roughly outlined, fill them in with a light tone.

• Go back over the shapes and refine the details before shading them in darker.

In this simple skills lesson, I’ll be going over the basics of creating a smoother tone in pencil without using smudging techniques or damaging the paper.

Materials

• Paper
• Pencils
• Kneadable eraser

Process

• Start by lightly shading in the shadow element of the rectangular panel.
• Don’t press too hard at any stage as this will crush down the tooth of the paper and create a shiny surface.

• Keep going over this swatch in light passes.
• Eventually the tone will get darker and darker.
• However, you will notice that the specklediness gets more noticeable. This is because you are only shading the raised parts of the paper’s tooth.

• In order to smooth the swatch out more, you will need to get the fine tip of your pencil to get into the valley’s of the paper’s tooth.
• You can do this by rotating the pencil in your fingers and changing the position of the pencil relative to the paper.

• Keep darkening any lighter patches and gradually the tone will get smoother.
• You can keep doing this for as long as you like (or until you’re happy with the smoothness!)