Drawing Simplified, Part II: Shadows and Form

One of the basic foundations of a good drawing or painting, besides rendering the proper shape, is good form. Form turns a two-dimensional object into a three-dimensional object, and gives interest to a picture. All objects have form, some more subtle than others, depending on the light source. Shadows provide form to objects and are denoted in values. The number of values (the dark and lightness) to a form depends on the light source, how close it is and how strong it is.

Shadows

Shadows provide dimension to an object. The shadow shape is the most discernable shape of value of an object. It is opposite the light source and reveals both the form (a solid shape with volume) and plane (a flattened area of a form) of an object.

Shadow Edges

Depending on the object, the edges of a shadow can be either sharp or soft. Observing an angular or planed object, as one plane meets another and turns away from the light, the shadow edges are sharp. For a curved object, the shadow edge is soft with a gradual shift in tone.

Distance also plays a part in the edges of a shadow. If the light source is close to the object, the cast shadow is softer on the edges. As you pull the light away from an object, the cast shadow is longer and has sharper edges.

Blending Tools for Drawing

Blending tools are great for a variety of art applications, but they are especially great for working with graphite, charcoal and soft pastels. They are most often used to move material around on a drawing surface to adjust the values. With blending tools, you can make smoother transitions between darks and lights and create different textures.

While you can use your fingers to blend areas in your work, your fingers contain oils that can contaminate the medium, leading to smudges or areas that are difficult to erase. Using a blending tool prevents the oils from mixing with the medium.

Blending Stumps

The most popular tools for blending drawing media are blending stumps and blending tortillons. Blending stumps are compressed cylinders of paper that come to a point at the end. They come in a variety of widths, but the tips are consistent in sharpness. Blending stumps typically have two pointed ends and when one end becomes dirty, the other can be used. Blending stumps are very inexpensive and can be disposed when they become too dirty to use. However, rubbing the soiled end against sandpaper will clean them to a degree.

Blending Tortillons

Blending tortillons are tightly rolled cylinders of paper that come to a point. Tortillons, unlike stumps, have only one end that is sharp. Like blending stumps, tortillons come in a variety of widths, but the ends are similar in "sharpness". Tortillons cannot be cleaned with sandpaper and are often disposed of when they become too dirty for use.

The Origins of Blue Paper

Drawing on Blue: European Drawings on Blue Paper, 1400s-1700s is an exhibition now showing at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. It traces the history of Blue paper and it’s adoption by European artists for its versatility and aesthetic qualities.

Blue paper was first made in Italy in the late fourteenth century. Earliest origins of blue paper were attributed to Venice, whose strong trade with the East included prized dyed white paper in red, orange and blue. Blue paper was originally made from old blue hemp and linen rags that were broken down into fiber pulp and then formed into sheets immersed in sizing in a mold. The sizing gave the paper a protective coating that helped to keep the ink and chalk from spreading once it was applied. They were manufactured in family-owned paper mills, in a process that was passed down through generations.

In the next two centuries, manufacturing plants sprung up all over Europe. This produced various production methods and quality. Some countries banned the import of blue paper from other countries to help establish and protect their own products.

Early fabrics were colored from natural dyes. One of the most dye fast colors was blue made originally from the woad plant, which was cultivated in Italy and later all of Europe. Woad is a yellow-flowered European plant from the cabbage family. The blue dye was extracted from the leaves after they had been dried, powdered and fermented. The blue textile dyes woad, logwood (a species of flowering tree in the legume family), and litmus (A coloring matter from lichens) were commonly used in paper coloring. Indigo was imported from the East and used in Italian paper production and later spread to Europe.

At first, blue paper was used as a commodity wrapping. As the quality improved, artists began to use it for studies. The first known artwork on blue paper has been attributed to Giovanni da Moden, a Bolognese painter. Later, the Italian painter Giovanni Bellini and many of his students drew studies with ink washes over black chalk on blue paper. The blue shade served as a mid-tone, while the wash defined the shadows and while chalk provided the highlights, This effect, known as chiaroscuro, is an artistic technique that creates pronounced contrast between areas of light and dark within a composition.

By the 18th century, drawings on blue paper were much sought after by art dealers. One painter, Jean-Baptiste Oudry, a history painter, produced hundreds of studies of his work on blue paper. He experimented with Prussian Blue and opaque white and gray washes that heightened the contrast. Sadly, with time, much of the blue paper used for artwork has faded to light or greenish blue.

By the 1800s, public demand for white paper forced papermakers to turn to using low-quality white rags. Papermakers started to tint white papers with blue pigments and dyes to visually neutralize their yellowish tonality of the rags.

 

Study of a Woman's Hands, 1646, Cornelis Janson van Ceulen. Black chalk heightened with white chalk on blue paper.

 

A Muse, mid-1720s, Rosalba Carriera. Pastel on blue paper.

Jonah Preaching at Nineveh, after 1733, Johann Wolfgang Baumgartner. Brown ink, gray wash, heightened with white opaque watercolor on blue paper with framing lines in black ink.

Ten Tips to Learn How to Draw

1. Have a good reference. If using photos, it helps to change color photos to black and white, if possible. This way you can see the full range of values more easily. If drawing from life, try to have a strong light source such as a spotlight, if possible. If not, figure out the direction and strength of the light on your subject. Also, look for reflected light.
2. Learn to “see” a subject. Spend time observing before you start your drawing. Look for the light and dark areas, soft and sharp edges, and contemplate the overall composition.
3. Make a ten-point value scale and use it as a reference. The best drawings have a full range of value. Look for the light and dark areas in your reference and learn how to shade to give your drawing dimension.
4. Look for the basic shapes: Cube, sphere, triangle and cylinder. All things have one or more basic shape. You can start with a shape and adapt it to your subject.
5. Try working with a grid when using reference photos. It’s a great way to learn how to observe your subject and is a helpful guide for the very beginner.
6. Know your medium and change it up. Understand how to hold a pencil to get the most out of the graphite, learn about the different pencil hardnesses and darknesses. Learn how to best use your blending stumps to get the results you want. Familiarize yourself with different types of charcoal. Try color markers and pen and ink.
7. Experiment with different surfaces. Drawing papers come in a variety of shades and thicknesses. Try toned papers and smooth and rough surfaces.
8. Loosen up. Draw with your shoulder instead of your wrist by moving your whole arm when you make a mark.
9. Draw often. Keep a sketchbook and draw anything and everything. Drawing is a skill that is learned and improves with practice.
10. Have fun. Draw with abandon, doodle, annotate, and don’t worry about what others think.

Drawing the Adult Head

Drawing and painting an adult portrait can be daunting at first, but it need not be. If you understand proportions, you can begin to get a good idea of where to place facial features.

One of the easiest ways to figure out the proportion of a face’s features is to begin with a basic egg shape and divide it into thirds, starting at the hairline and ending at the chin. The top third will fall between the hairline and just below the center of the eyes.

A third of the way down from the eyes is the bottom of the nose, which lies halfway between the eyes and the chin. The bottom third is the area between the bottom of the nose to the bottom of the chin.

Dividing further, the bottom of the lip lies approximately halfway between the bottom of the nose and the chin. The length of the ears extends from brow line to bottom of the nose.

Looking straight at the face, if you draw a line straight down from the middle of the eye, you will touch the edge of the lips. There is one eye width between the eyes, with the head being approximately five eyes wide. If you draw a line straight down from the tear ducts, you will touch the outer edge of the nose.

In profile, the head fits a square. If you draw a horizontal line through the halfway point of your square, it will pass through the lower part of the eye, while a vertical drawn through the halfway point will pass directly in front of the ear.

Not all heads are the same, and head shapes and sizes vary with age. Use these measurements merely as points of reference to compare to your model and make adjustments where necessary. For example, your model may have a high forehead or a wider jaw.

 

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“The reason some portraits don't look true to life is that some people make no effort to resemble their pictures."

-       Salvador Dali

Blind Contour Drawing

Contour drawing was first taught at the Art Student’s League in New York by Kimon Nicolaïdes in the 1920s and 30s. He used it and other exercises as a way to train his students to observe their subjects more closely. His methods are still being taught in art schools today.

Blind contour drawing involves carefully observing the outline and shapes of a subject while slowly drawing its contours in a continuous line without looking at the paper. By doing so, you are forced to draw what you actually see instead of what you think you see.

Blind Contour Drawing

Contour drawing was first taught at the Art Student’s League in New York by Kimon Nicolaïdes in the 1920s and 30s. He used it and other exercises as a way to train his students to observe their subjects more closely. His methods are still being taught in art schools today. 

Blind contour drawing involves carefully observing the outline and shapes of a subject while slowly drawing its contours in a continuous line without looking at the paper. By doing so, you are forced to draw what you actually see instead of what you think you see.
Blind Contour Drawing Exercise

You should definitely try this! If you do, please send me a photo of your results, including a photo of your subject. Let me know what thoughts are running through your mind and your observations as you move your pen/pencil around the page.

For this exercise, you will need the following:

• A pen or drawing pencil
• A drawing pad
• A timer
• A simple subject. I suggest your hand, a shoe, or a grouping of fruit. Anything fairly simple will do.

1. Place your subject at a 90 - 180-degree angle away from your forward drawing position, to the left if you are right-handed, or the right if you are left-handed. You need to be looking away from your paper.
2. Set your timer for ten minutes.
3. Set your pen/pencil on a point on the pad and look at one area in your subject.
4. Begin drawing, don’t look at your drawing pad and don’t lift the pen/pencil from the pad.
5. Go slowly. As your eyes follow the line of your subject one millimeter at a time, your pen/pencil will move at the same slow speed.
6. Follow the outline and inner lines of your subject, including the details within the subject, changing direction, without lifting your pen/pencil. Try to follow the lines as if you were actually touching the object with your finger. Feel the item as it curves here, depresses there, and as it twists and turns.
7. Do this without stopping until the timer goes off.

When you look at your picture, it will look like a crazy jumble of lines, but if you look closely, you will see an interesting pattern, one that includes a lot of details that you may not have realized if you had not learned to see it.

Instead of provoking anxiety, blind contour drawing is meant to help you practice your observation skills. If you approach the technique with patience, it can even be a calming exercise. Look at it as a sort of exercise in meditation. The pen goes down on the page and your eye goes to a specific point in your subject and your eye and the pen move in sync.

There’s just something about moving that slowly and that focused that makes you empty your brain of everything else. You will begin to see things differently and your skills in seeing and drawing will improve.

My effort here to do a blind contour drawing. I admit I had trouble doing this very slow and ended up redrawing the images of the carrots, so there are two sets here. I used a Pentel pen, Doing this is a great way to slow down your eyes and check shapes and relationships.

According to Nicolaïdes, “Because pictures are meant to be seen, too much emphasis (and too much dependence) is apt to be placed upon seeing. Actually, we see through the eyes, rather than with them. It is necessary to test everything you see with what you discover through the other senses – hearing, taste, smell, and touch – and their accumulated experience. If you attempt to rely on eyes alone, they can sometimes actually mislead you.”

You can read about this and a series of other drawing exercises created by Kimon Nicolaïdes in his 1941 book The Natural Way to Draw: A Working plan for Art Study.

Painting on the Farm River - Part II

Welcome back to Painting on the Farm River. I wanted to tell you why I go out in all types of weather in all kinds of places, and put up with bugs and car fumes and all manner of smells, noises, and, at times, strange conversations, to paint, and why I love it. Maybe you will feel inspired to do the same one day.

As far as the painting, I'm going to show you the painting process and my thoughts behind it, I've included some tips to be comfortable while standing outside in one spot for 2-3 hours at a time. Finally, I'm throwing the gauntlet down, and challenging you!

Why I Love Plein Air Painting

My knowledge of painting took a huge leap forward when I started to take lessons and workshops from artists who paint and draw from life. I learned a great deal more about drawing, composition, value, edges, and light. I bought a cheap French easel and began painting in my neighborhood and took it with me on short trips. My bookshelves slowly filled with books written by famous artists and I carefully studied their methods. I also logged on to artist forums on the Internet and studied other artists, their work, philosophies, and critiques.

In between studying other artists, I painted as often as I could. The night before I went out, I would gather my canvas, easel, brushes and paint together and set them by the door. The next day, I would get up early (usually on the weekend), and be set up and painting on site by nine o’clock am. My first few canvases were nothing impressive, but it didn’t matter. I was hooked.

Unlike working from a photo, when painting en plein air, the world around you caresses all of your senses and sends you to a meditative state of mind. There is a sense of urgency to quickly capture the astounding array of color, light, and sound that nature presents like a buffet at a king's banquet. Painting in the country, you are enveloped with delicate sounds, wild flora and musky aromas of the woods, grassy fields, babbling brooks, and the wildlife that live there. Once, I saw a skinny silver fox tiptoe across the road not fifty feet from where I was painting. In the city, there’s the buzz of bus and car engines, the clanging of the train, the bustle of people rushing to do their errands, and the aroma of freshly made hot coffee and donuts seeping onto the sidewalk. You can’t experience these sensations when painting from a photograph. Sitting indoors at an easel, you don’t feel the warm sun on your skin, smell the scent of honeysuckle floating in the breeze, or hear the birds singing in the trees. It's more than just putting paint on canvas, it's the whole experience.



Painting in a field of sunflowers on a warm summer day, the bees buzzing all around me!
Photo by Dennis Beaulieu

Doing a Quick Drawing

I first decided what area I wanted to include in my composition. When you paint outdoors, you have to eliminate some things, and having a view finder helps to focus on one area. I then did a rough charcoal drawing. I used my chopstick to measure distance and relationships of the trees and water, and I put in some values.

Transferring the Image to the Panel

Next, I drew the picture on the canvas with vine charcoal eliminating some trees and branches. No need to worry about detail here, just get a good drawing with good perspective. I'm drawing and checking my measurements, both horizontal and vertical. I look at my drawing on paper and the scene in front of me.

Block-In Stage

The block-in stage is for filling in large areas with fairly thin color. Here, I filled in the darks first, then worked my way through the middle values. The downed trees had some nice shadows, and some of the river was a golden/rusty red sand that contrasted nicely with the blue from the sky.

The hemlock was a soft green with great highlights from the sunlight. It contrasted nicely with the browns of the surroundings. I put in rocks, the dark greens of the hemlock, and the moss on the bank. I decided to remove the dead limb that was blocking the water between the downed trees. Doing this, the eye is now better directed into the picture and up to a point where the river disappears.

I'm refining my shapes here, checking my values. Not a lot of detail yet.

"The sky is the key to the landscape because of the quality and quantity of the light falling from It determines color unity and value contrast of the remaining elements."

- John F. Carlson

Clothing Suggestions for Plein Air Painting

• Wear loose fitting clothes for ease of movement and added insulation during cool times.
• Dress in layers so you can adjust based on temperature.
• Wear drab or dark colors. Bright or light colors will reflect onto your painting surface and effect how your painting appears in color and value. Some bright colors will attract critters. (blue attracts some)
• Use a wide brimmed hat to shade your eyes. Ventilated in summer and insulated in winter.
• Never wear sunglasses. They dilate your pupils thus changing your perception of values, and they skew colors.
• Take a wind breaker or light poncho in case of inclement weather. An insulated jacket in winter.
• Wear comfortable high-top shoes or boots for getting into those out of the way places.
• Good quality socks; (wool will repel water, good cotton will cool.)
• Cotton or wool gloves with the fingers cut out in the winter. Perhaps some of those chemical hand warmers for your pockets.
• A scarf or jacket with a hood to protect your neck in the winter.

 

I have a Tin Cloth Packer Hat that protects my face and head during cool or hot sunny weather. It's also water resistant. Hat and Hooded Utility Jacket are from Filson.

"We must not imitate the externals of nature with so much fidelity that the picture fails to evoke that wonderful teasing recurrence of emotions that marks the contemplation of a work of art."

-John F. Carlson

Next

In Part III, I'll take you through the last steps to completion, including my thoughts about painting water.

Consider Yourself Challenged!

I have heard from a few of you since I started posting instructional emails. The comments have been encouraging and kind. A couple of you have said that they are drawing or painting, but I know there are more of you being creative during this time of seclusion (and if not, what are you waiting for?).

I've squeezed into my armor (not the most comfortable bodysuit I've ever worn) and thrown the gauntlet down. CONSIDER YOURSELF CHALLENGED! If you've been drawing, painting, doodling, etching, coloring with crayons, sewing, knitting, embroidering, sculpting, making origami or any other type of creative art, send me a photo. You have approximately two weeks to think about it and create something. Send your photos to pmeglio99@gmail.com and I will post them in my email once this series is done.

Finding Vanishing Points When Painting Outdoors

According to Wikipedia, a vanishing point is a point in a perspective drawing to which parallel lines not parallel to the image plane appear to converge. The number and placement of the vanishing points determines which perspective technique is being used. The concept was first used by Renaissance artists such as Donatello, Masaccio and Leonardo da Vinci.


It is very important when painting outdoors to establish your vanishing points with objects, especially when painting buildings and structures. If you do not figure out your vanishing point early in your composition, your structure’s drawing may sit incorrectly and no amount of change, including values, painting technique, or even a great composition can fix it.
In my painting, "White Silo," the vanishing point is actually outside of the painting's left edge.

"White Silo" by Patty Meglio

Suppose that you are painting a building from a side view. A quick and easy way to figure out your vanishing point is to use your arms and feet as measuring devices. To do this with a building, face your building, and turn your left foot to line up parallel with the left side of the building. Raise your left arm and point it in the same direction as your foot, at eye-level. If you draw lines along your arm and from your foot outward, the point at which the lines meet will be your vanishing point. Do the same on the right side, with your right foot pointing outward parallel to the building’s right side, and your arm sighted along your eye-level looking towards the right. You now have two vanishing points from which you can measure the correct proportion of the sides of your building.

"The Last Supper" by Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci used perspective in this painting to draw the viewer’s eyes to Jesus as the star of his painting.

Da Vinci photo courtesy of Wikipedia.

American Modernists on Paper

The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, CT is currently hosting an exhibit of 100 watercolors, pastels, and drawings on paper by leading American modernists, called American Moderns on Paper. Some of the artists exhibiting include John Sloan, Georgia O’Keeffe, Edward Hopper, John Marin, Salvatore Dali, and Andrew Wyeth. My favorites of the show were two watercolors by Edward Hopper, Captain Strout’s House, Portland Head, and Methodist Church – so like New England and very cool angles, perspective, and color harmonies,

 

and a painting by Georgia O’Keefe, Slightly Open Clam Shell. O’Keeffe’s subtle use of color and softness inspire a curiosity to open the clam shell and explore the mystery within.

Another drawing that I thought was interesting was William Glackens’ Far From the Fresh Air Farm (East Side). It was packed with so much information so that there was very little white space and really spoke of a typical New York city scene, fast paced and energetic, even then. Eugene Berman did some nice sketches for the theatre and Granddaughter by Andrew Wyeth was inspiring both with color choices and composition. There was a nice mix of abstract and realistic art that was separated by different eras in history. Sections included Progressive and Avant-Garde artists (Demuth, Marin, O’keeffe, Dove), Regionalism, Social Realism and American Visions (Burchfield, Hopper, Bacon), Surrealism and Neo-Romanticism (Paper Ball, Calder, Blume, Tonny), and Postwar Abstraction and resurgence of Realism (Tobey, Wyeth, Kelly). Each section had a nice summary of that period in time and described the way that history affected the art of that period. You can see a slideshow of the exhibit and take an audio tour by going to http://americanmoderns.org/. Exhibit goes on until January 17, 2011. Be sure to see it.

Photos courtesy of Wadsworth Atheneum.

Designing a Bag for Support of CT Foodbank/Foodshare

I recently broke down and bought an Intuos professional pen tablet for my computer. I had been thinking about purchasing one for a while now. I've struggled without one when designing some illustrations for a cookbook and for a logo for a flag project. While I'm not an illustrator, I love to design things and have struggled with the mouse for a while now.

I must say that it isn't an easy thing to learn because you can't watch where your pen goes on the pad, but rather you have to watch it on the monitor as you draw. At least that is true of the model that I bought, which is the Intuos4 medium. One thing I struggled with at first was resizing the monitor to fit my tablet size. Once I was able to do this, it went easier.  I think that I will enjoy using the tablet, but it will take some practice. I would like to buy some of the extra pens with brush tips to go with it. It sure makes it easier to draw a design from scratch on the computer. I drew it in Photoshop in black on a transparent background and then converted it to white. The white will show up better on a dark background.

Here's the design and the bag for a promotion for the CT Food Bank through the Northford Women's Club and the North Branford Women's Club.

The bag with design in white.

The bag is an 8"x5" fold up nylon bag that you can easily tuck in your purse or carry bag and whip out when you are in a store. It comes in royal blue and black and goes for only $5, not including shipping. If you are interested, email me at info@northfordwomensclub.org. All profits go to supporting the GFWC/CT State Project, which is the CT Food Bank/Foodshare.

Seven Components in Painting

You should be mindful of the Seven Components when you undertake a painting. The drawing and composition, in my opinion, are the most important elements. Within each component is a checklist of things to watch for and to be aware of.

Drawing
It is so important to have a strong drawing, and a well thought out layout. If the drawing is weak, you will struggle with the paint in an effort to make it work.

1. Upside down - Check the painting upside down for errors in the drawing
2. Negative space
3. Proportion midpoint, relative, foreshortening
4. Anatomy
5. Perspective sighting, people, buildings, interiors, aerial
6. Gesture
7. Seeing vs. knowing

Tone Values
1. Shape of dark and light
2. Five tone values
3. Non-reflective light
4. Reflective light
5. Value dominance
6. Local value/home value

Found/lost Line
1. Contour drawing basic/one-line
2. Hard/soft edges

Rhythm of Application
1. Strokes
2. Paint quality
3. Sliced-bread theory
4. Slow strokes
5. Fast strokes
6. Long strokes
7. Short strokes

Composition
1. Imitate/emulate: studying old/new master paintings
2. Golden mean
3. Focal area
4. Twelve-shape design
5. Tie shapes together

Design of light
1. Color/ value dominance
2. Tangents
3. Balancing extremes
4. Cropping format
5. Working from photos
6. Setting up still life
7. One scene, four versions

Color
1. Tone value in color
2. Colorist vs. tonalist
3. Limited palette: one color, two colors, three colors, four colors
4. Bracketing your colors
5. Color and complement
6. Color dominance
7. Color temperature

Motivation or Concept: Why are you doing this piece?
1. Relaxation
2. Stress management
3. Nurturing your creativity
4. For a gift
5. Learn or improve certain skills
6. Impress friends
7. Rite of passage
8. Fun