Drawing Monday Tonal Development 3 November

Tonal Development   3 November

After the half term I was ready to get back to the collage and the drawing lessons. Even though I've done some drawing at home over last week it wasn't the same as having the group lessons. I missed looking at the different styles of the class, getting ideas, and being able to talk through your thoughts. Getting feed back from the other students is something I find very useful.

This Monday's lesson was continuing on from last week, which was developing tone. We were set a task to draw an object of our choosing on a large A1 piece of paper. We were then to cover the paper with charcoal so we had a surface to add and take away from.

Having made my feathers in micro-macro a similar way I was eager to try out this way of drawing again. I started by picking my object. This was an important task as I wanted an object with a contrast of textures so I could have a range of tones to draw. Searching through the boxes of objects I found one that was very interesting. I still have no idea what it was, but it seemed to be made out of natural materials.

I started by closely examining the object, turning it around and looking at different angles so that I could find the most interesting view point to start my drawing. I finally settled on turning the object so I could see the inside and part of the outer rim. This was so I could get the contrast of the bumpy inside and the smoother outer skin of the subject in question.

Having established what I will be drawing, I then had to cover my paper with charcoal. This was simple, but messy. After going through one whole charcoal stick I was ready to start the drawing. We were to begin by rubbing away the charcoal that we had just put on as a background. This was a different type of drawing than normal, but I just saw it as drawing the light instead of the shadow.

I started my drawing by lightly mapping the outline making sure that I didn't take away too much of the charcoal to begin with. I then quickly rubbed out the parts where the light was hitting object. This time taking away more of the black charcoal and starting to work on tone. With this method I had made three tones; the black background, the grayish tone that was the mid light; and the lightest tone that were the spots where the light was hitting the object. Having the basic tone mapped out, I was now ready to add and work back into the layers with some more charcoal. This was easier than I thought it would be as the charcoal when smudged made it easy to blend tones together, creating a smooth transition between the tones.

I found trying to get the tones of the smooth areas difficult as they had very little change in the tone other then gray to black so I had to work out ways to get the texture without losing any tone. One of the many good things about working with a black charcoal background is that I could add many layers to one part without damaging the paper. This was a good thing seeing as parts of my object had very complex textures. The only way I could have a good contrast with the tones and still keep the texture, was to layer smudge the layer on top of the paper over again until I was happy with the results.

With a lot of the layering done, I quickly went over many parts of the drawing adding darker or lighter parts making sure the contrast was there so the object stood out from the background. After a lot of adding and taking away, and then adding again, I was happy with my artwork. The lesson on building tone by taking away was not only useful, but enjoyable.