Once you have made sure that they are correct draw the features
Posted in General on 23. Jul, 2010
Once you have made sure that they are correct, draw the features. Stand some distance away from your drawing, taking care to keep the same viewpoint, and carefully assess the angle and position of each feature. Transfer to the paper.5 The finished drawing.Note: You must keep your arm straight when taking measurements so the pencil remains a constant distance from the subject you are measuring. Close one eye to make it easier to focus, and concentrate on looking at the pencil. Your subject will look slightly blurred but that does not matter: taking measurements will help you to get the general proportions right. You will add the details to your drawing later.USING GRIDS AND GRAPH PAPERAnother method for judging proportion is a grid – a system of vertical and horizontal lines used as reference points.
The simplest grid is a “division of thirds”, in which the space is divided roughly into thirds, both horizontally and vertically. Any object placed where divisions intersect automatically attracts the viewer’s eye. Graph paper, with its horizontal and vertical lines making ready reference points, is useful to prepare a preliminary sketch for a later work.STILL LIFE COMPOSITIONDrawing the correct proportions of objects in a still-life group is always a challenge. In the photograph above the chimney of the oil lamp is placed on the approximate vertical “third” and the other objects arranged around it. The wooden horse is set at an angle to create a more dynamic baseline, and this is balanced by the position of the books on the opposite side. The space between the objects are equally important in balancing the composition.STEP BY STEP1 Use a 2B pencil to put in the main structural lines. Put a vertical line through the centre of the glass chimney and a horizontal line along the top of the pitcher, so that you can use them as points of reference.2 Now start adding the tones.
Hold the 2B pencil lightly, and use a sweeping movement so that you can add tone over the whole picture area.3 Still using the 2B pencil, carefully draw in the details within the shadowed areas, but don’t linger too long in any one area.4 Start to transfer the sketch on to your final drawing paper. Use an HB pencil to lightly draw the centre horizontal and vertical lines. Refer to the grid picture for relative proportions and to the still-life grouping for detailing.THE FINISHED DRAWINGThe drawing (5) has texture and depth The darker areas have been defined further by charcoal. All the objects are linked visually by the shadows and tones between them. The shape along the bottom of the items has been given as much consideration as the silhouette at the top of the composition.BOOK LISTThe Complete Drawing Course by Stan Smith (Collins & Brown pounds 17.99); Draw: How to Master the Art by Jeffrey Camp (Dorling Kindersley pounds 12.99); Drawing Basics by Patricia Monahan (Studio Vista pounds 12.99); Collins Complete Drawing Course by Ian Simpson (Harper Collins pounds 19.99)BOOK OFFERThe Complete Drawing Course by our master, Stan Smith, is offered to readers of the Independent on Sunday at a specially reduced price. Copies cost pounds 14.99 each (including post and packaging) – a saving of pounds 3 on the recommended retail price.
To order, please ring credit card orders on 01403 710851 during office hours. We aim to despatch copies by return; however, all orders will be filled within 28 days.. TAKE A hike through the Lake District celebrated by William Wordsworth, or a stroll along the footpaths of Constable Country, and you may think you are seeing nature at its best and most beautiful – unspoilt, untouched, wild and free from human interference. This is of course a myth, because both are the products of intensive land management spanning many centuries.
Stephen Budiansky, an American science writer, argues that this myth of wild nature has become so engrained in our psyche that it threatens the very thing it is intended to protect – nature itself
Britain is not alone in having an “unnatural” landscape. It exists in just about every place on Earth where human beings have lived. Budiansky believes this is not just an aspect of the recent explosion in the global human population, swelling from one billion in 1800 to over five billion today, but stems from a much older interaction between nature and its most inquisitive species, Homo sapiens.
In fact he believes this goes back as far as the end of the last Ice Age, 12,000 years ago. Nature has never really been left to its own devices, he argues, but has been “managed” on a mass scale by generations of people down the millennia. His message is that if we fail to recognise this, there will be little chance of solving some of the dire environmental problems we now face.Budiansky argues that the whole idea of “balance of nature”, which pervades environmental thinking today, is a myth.