Improving tonal range

On the line of action site I found an article about mastering your pencil, which provides advice on increasing the tonal range that you can achieve with a single pencil. The idea is basically to fill in an increasing number of boxes on a daily basis to get an increase in tone across the page. 

As I’ve had feedback that improving my tonal range would be valuable I decided to try it: 

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  Front page

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  Continuing

The exercise does seem to be valuable, though I have a way to go as there is another page of increasing shades to try. As might be expected it is getting progressively more difficult. Its likely I should be trying a similar exercise with other mark making approaches – such as conte and charcoal.

Assignment 3

Starting

Brief review

The brief for this assignment calls for the following main criteria for the drawing:

• Outdoor scene in A1 or A2;
• Shows depth – aerial or linear perspective;
• Natural objects;
• Straight lined objects.

The scene selection and approach are closely aligned. The instructions provide the following approach:

• Preliminary drawings to experiment with the composition.
• Make sketches to practise the perspective of the scene right.
• Broad sketches in charcoal or diluted ink and brush and trial other media.
• With an A2 or A1 keeping your preliminary sketches around you for reference.

Project 5: Townscapes

Exercise 1 Sketchbook of townscape drawings

Barbican Corner

I chose this building because of the interesting curve in combination with the glass and concrete look. Quite typical for this area near the Barbican. The light was coming from behind in the early morning, with the building opposite throwing a shadow on it.The horizon was below the image bottom, which I felt emphasised looking up and size. For a taller building I’d need a touch of vertical foreshortening.

Project 4: Perspective

Exercise 1: Parallel Perspective

This might seem an odd view to select, but the set of angles and lines created by the view was interesting, and using the sad step as the rectangular item just seemed to fit the theme.

Project 2: Landscape

Ex 1: Clouds

Initial sketching

Project 1: Trees

On consideration of my feedback from my tutor I’m trying a new format for this blog. I’m going to be starting to write each project up in a single post. I will add to the post as I do the drawings for the project, which I’m hoping will make the intention of the drawing process clearer.

Ex 1: Approaching a single tree

Making a start

I started by experiments in my sketchbook.

Life Drawing Meetup

I’ve found another source of life drawing to try. This is in Canterbury and centred around Meet-up. The session was of a fairly normal structure, but I was somewhat happier with the results.

First a set of 1 minute poses to warm up:

Life Drawing 4/9

The next of my Life Drawing sessions. We started with a blind contour drawing

Croquis Cafe Heads Up 2

Worked through this video:

First a series of 2 minute poses..

Man sleeping on a train

Part of my on-going efforts to draw people. Getting better. This is starting to form a series: I’ve taken a set of photos on trains, at stations and commuting in general to use as subjects for sketches.

Life Drawing

I managed to get to my first life drawing class in a while.The first exercise, the featured image, was Blind contour drawing. There are some recognisable elements at least. An interesting feature here was that occasional ‘repositioning’ was considered acceptable. I did so about 4 times in the 12m session.

High Tooth Paper

Some of the exercises in the course talk about using large paper with significant tooth. The biggest paper I had with significant tooth was A3, so I picked up an A2 pad of ‘Daler and Rowney Mixed Media‘ paper which I’ve previously picked up an A4 pad of.

Croquis Cafe: Heads up

Practice based on Croquis Cafe expressions practice video. A series of 1 min poses followed by a 10 min pose.

Odilon Redon’s tonal drawings

A quick Google Search (https://www.google.co.uk/search?odilon+redon+tonal+drawings) on Odilon and his Noirs (the name he uses for his tonal drawings) quickly brings a wealth of information. This can be further elaborated by wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odilon_Redon 

Struggling with people

Sketch from a photograph from the following article: http://v3.mirrorarts.lk/fashion/item/1923-head-wraps-new-fashion. Some progress, though the angle of the nose and the angle of the face are out of alignment with each other.

Experimenting with a graphite stick

I recently picked up a graphite stick and wanted to see what it can do. It is like a big fat graphite crayon. Clearly not intended for detail work.

Drawing with rhythm

I came an interesting section about drawing with rhythm in Andrew Loomis’ book “Figure Drawing for all its worth.” (PDF available here.) He describes drawing with rhythm as following through the major lines of forms in various graceful curves as part of the setup. The drawing on page 136 is of particular interest in this respect. As an experiment in this approach I tried a drawing of a dancer. Although I am unhappy with many of the details of the image, the basic idea of building up the form with interesting curves was very useful. Now I just need to learn a whole bunch about anatomy.

Project 5.2: Photomontage

Reflecting on the assignment and my previous blog about sculptors’ use of photomontage I decided I really had to give it a go. I’m in Elbigenalp in Austria with the sun shining, so that has to be a good start for the landscape part.

Project 4.3: Evaluation and Reflection

Observation and Construction

In all cases, I’m not totally happy with the images but they are a definite improvement over where I was. In the hands images, for example, I’m not that happy with the fist. I was going for a darker image in the tonal range (which worked), but I’m not as happy with the observation and accuracy of this one. In the touching feet, the background needs a level of work. I might also have put more effort into the rendering of the material of the jeans. For the crossed feet the toe on the right foot (on the left hand side of the image) is a little too bulbous. Similarly the arch of the foot is somewhat off.