Sketchbook Day 26–carbon copies

Thank you to Jenn for her suggestion of using a bamboo tip to get curved lines. I wonder if it would work in this carbon drawing method? Although this task is related to objects with straight edges, some of you might prefer to draw something with curves instead?
TODAY’S TASK – Draw an object such as a table, chair, box, greenhouse, building – anything in fact that is 3 dimensional and has lots of straight lines. I hope you have been practicing as a result of yesterday’s task.
Try this method of indirect drawing – you scribble two layers of media on the left hand page. The principle of this carbon method is to build a layer of chalk onto the paper surface and then another layer of crayon. The crayon will not stick to the paper so can easily be lifted in the drawing method.
I suggest you make an initial experimental surface to find out what media you have available works best. If you know of other media, please let us all know.
I covered the top half of the page with a white chalk-like charcoal and the bottom half of the page with a coloured pastel. Then added second layers in vertical bands of 4 different ones I had – oil pastel, wax crayon, stabilo pencil and Markel oil stick. You can judge for yourself which ones worked best.
 
Turn your page over and make your drawing on the left hand page of this next  pair of pages, using a firm, rounded (not sharp) point such as a biro. I used a ‘spent’ biro so that it only made deep colourless lines in the paper surface which I then smudged with a coloured pastel to show it better – I hope you can see the lines.
My drawn lines show the lines of my garden chair. I have taken each line out to the edge of the page. This gives the drawing interest and also allows you to check that your lines are tapering towards the top area – remember that shapes appear to get smaller as they are further from us – AND that all up-right lines remain upright!


Turn your page back and look at the way your pressured lines have picked up the top layer of media from the opposite page. The wax crayon seems to have transferred least well, even though that is the traditional crayon to use.

The drawing below is of a different view of my garden chair. I used white chalk and a layer of wax crayons on top as my carbon page.

TODAY’S TIPS – Don’t scratch the lines as in a previous method – use a ball point pen so that you just make a deep mark with a lot of pressure.

You can transfer more of the ‘carbon’ colour by more drawing on the back of the next page of course. I continued with this one by scribbling over all the negative spaces around the chair. The carbon copy becomes a drawing in its own right and of course shows the positive areas of the chair – two for the price of one again!

Sketchbook Day 25 - getting into perspective

My few days away were spent near Swansea, at the Gower Show, where the Gower Society were launching a re-print of my parents' designs of the stunning landscape and historical buildings of the Gower peninsular. My parents were founder members of this society so my brother and I were thrilled to be invited to join some of the current members for lunch and be given a set of cards.

TODAY’S TASK - The next few drawing days will help you to use line in interesting ways and to look at a way of drawing 3D objects using straight lines. Several of you are probably know how to use the principles of perspective, so please challenge yourself to draw more complex objects or objects from unusual angles. I hope these basic tips in today’s lesson will help those who have no experience, but nothing beats looking very hard at your object – with your brain as well as your eyes.

TODAY’S TIPS - Remember 2 things -
Shapes appear to get smaller as they get further from you. Further away is towards the top of the page. Closer to you is at the bottom of the page.
Very important - all upright shapes stay upright!

I drew these without a ruler so try this yourself as this is not a geometry lesson. Press lightly with the first line to judge whether it looks right; make changes, again using a light pressure. Make your line darker when you feel it is right. No need to rub out the lighter lines as these will all add up to being part of the character of your sketch. I have rubbed out a few lines in these drawings below to make them less confusing as a teaching aid.

The basic plan – Draw 2 lines at an angle from one side of the page to the other that are not quite parallel but seem to taper slightly in the direction of the arrows in this drawing. Draw another two lines that taper in the opposite direction, with arrows facing the other direction.

Left image - Where these 4 lines cross, draw lines in a downward direction. Make these parallel to the left and right edges of your page. These lines will indicate the legs of your imaginary table – remember – all upright shapes stay upright!

Middle image – Decide on the height of your imaginary table by marking a point  [A] on the near leg. Draw 2 more tapering lines through this point one in one direction and the other in the opposite direction. These two new tapering lines should follow the taper of the first sets of tapering lines you drew. As these new lines pass through the lines for the left and right legs, these points will indicate their base [B and C].
From these points [B and C], draw 2 more tapering lines, again following the direction of the other lines, but still trying to create a slight taper as the lines move towards the top of the page. These 2 lines should meet at the base of leg D. If this doesn’t happen, check that you have made all the tapering lines look as if they are disappearing into the distance by very gradually looking as if they would all join into a point, well off your page, to the right and a point to the left.
 
Right image – Draw bold lines to show your imaginary table or perhaps a box.
You will notice that this ‘table’ or ‘box’ looks as if it is being viewed from a height – as if you are looking down at the table from the ceiling. So I suppose it looks more like a brick or box shape as we are more used to viewing smaller objects from above.

To change the angle of view, you need to change the angle of your tapering guidelines. Notice how the lines in the drawing below are different to the ones above and produce a table/box shape viewed as if you are looking at it from a lower position.

Perhaps you can get the idea from these two woodcuts by my father, Edward Martin – one viewed from high up, looking down into the church in Cheriton Valley on the left and on the right, looking upwards from the road towards the church in Llangennith

To help you gauge the best angle for a particular drawing, hold a straight edge up in front of your eye. You’ll notice the ‘learning’ drawing on the right is not totally accurate as I have simplified it to help me understand it first. I was pleased to be able to make the legs and arms look solid.

 

Tomorrow I’ll use my experience of drawing these lines to make drawings that are freer and more characterful of my garden chair. I hope you’ll find this preparatory stage intriguing.

Sketchbook Day 23–a few away-days

 

It was lovely to meet Julia Green, a Distant Stitch student that some of you will have met at Summer School 2012 in Ruth’s workshop. Julia was one of my students at the Gilding the Stitch workshop in Solihull, Birmingham yesterday.

I’m off again this morning for a couple of days to an area of South Wales that is my favourite place and was where I spent my childhood – the Gower peninsular, near Swansea, the first area to be awarded the title of ‘Outstanding Natural Beauty’ in the UK.

My parents who were both artists and designers (as well as mother being a well known embroiderer) contributed drawings for a regular publication by the Gower Society. These have just been re-printed as greetings cards for fund-raising. My brother, husband and myself are invited to an event in Gower to launch this tomorrow. I thought you might like to see an example of their work. Below are two scenes around Penrice castle which is where this event will be held tomorrow – in a marquee rather than the castle ruins I hope!

 

SKETCHBOOKDAY 24 – Away in Gower

As I’ll be away today and tomorrow, this will be two days of rest. A pic to give some interest to this day - I finally managed to get a drawing I was pleased with of the clematis growing over my window. It was a rainy day so I worked from the lines within a paper frame stuck to my workroom window. Isn’t it good to get a printed version on the opposite page. This could also be worked into.

 

I was interested to hear that you have also been using Windows Live Writer to set up the info on your blog Daniela. You mentioned that the images don’t enlarge. I’ve checked this on yours and can see that this is the case. I’ve checked it on mine and they seem to enlarge, but not hugely.

Looking forward to the next sketchbook day on Tuesday. See you all then!

Sketchbook Day 21 and 22–sgrafitto

 

I am venturing north to Birmingham to day to do a workshop with Sutton Coldfield Creative Stitchers at their exciting ‘Stitched-Up’ summer event. Hope to meet up with Maggie Grey and Sue Rangeley and others. My next blog entry will be on Saturday so you have two day’s worth here. It’s raining today so if it’s the same with you, perhaps you’ll need to place your frame onto a window or use an indoor plant.

A very useful blogging tip from Kay Lockie – use Windows Live Writer to write your blog. I’m using it now – just like a Word programme - it’s so much easier than doing it in ‘blogger’. If this works, you must all download it.

SKETCHBOOK DAY 21 – Trial and error

TODAY’S TASK – Explore different media to find the best combination to make layers for scraping back (rather than scratching) – politely known as the technique of sgrafitto. Not all combinations will work. It is based on the principle of placing a layer of colour on top of another one and then scratching back to reveal the colour underneath.

TODAY’S TIPS – Do a tester page as this saves you colouring in vast areas only to find you can’t scrape it back!

The secret is to use a ‘slippery’ medium in the bottom layer so that the top layer doesn’t mix in when you add it.

Some media like to be left to ‘dry’ before adding the second layer.

SKETCHBOOK DAY 22 – building up and removing

I did this yesterday, outside in the lovely sunshine - I’m sorry that your working week has been sunny and the weekend a wet one Anne.

TODAY’S TASK - Prepare a coloured ground two layers of colour media.

TODAY’S TIPS – You can use more than one colour in each layer. The image below shows the ground colours of wax crayons which are going to be the colour of my scraped lines. The top layer of pastel crayons will be the colour of my background. Difficult to get your head round, but easier when you take time to think about it and actually do it.

 

This is the result – the tall stems of fennel with their feathery fronds and umbrella formation seed heads. Too much detail to give in such a small area of my sketchbook page so I just ‘suggested’ the effects.

I then did a simpler study of the fennel as it is such a beautiful structure. (Curved lines are really difficult! Any tips?)

Sketchbook Day 20 - wax resist

The weather is dry and sunny here so I'm enjoying popping outside to sit in front of my huge stems of fennel. Hope you can work outside too.

                        

   

TODAY'S TASK - Use candle wax or wax crayon to mask out lighter shapes. Paint over with water colour or inks. 'Scratch-out' across the wax marks to create cracks to allow the colour to seep through. The scratch marks were trying to suggest the fine detail of the fennel seed heads.

Winter clematis outside window.   On this page, I was trying to record the light patches of sky

                                                       through the leaves - not quite got it right as it's difficult to

                                                       see where you've put the invisible wax! Will try again later.

                                                      Two different coloured water colour paints were used.

The wax marks have been added to a previous drawing to suggest the tall fennel stems and seed heads. This is a little dark as I didn't choose a contrasting enough paint colour to the first layer. No matter, it makes a mysterious effect and the the effect on the opposite page got better! 

It is lovely to see the scratch-out technique in a 1882 painting by Meg's great, great aunt in her blog (Meg's that is) Set the Fibres Burning - link below. Thanks for showing this Meg.

TODAY'S TIPS - 'Scratch-out' through the wax areas to create cracks in the wax for the ink to go through - just like a classic batik method. The scratches seem to become much darker lines if done when the paint is still wet. Enlarge the images to see this and note that only one colour was used in the top one.

If building up a layer onto a previous drawing, choose one that is lightish and use a darkish colour on top to give a contrast between the two layers.

Every time you add a layer of wet, close your sketchbook and hold firmly to take a print on the opposite page. These can be worked into later.

Sketchbook Day 19 - layers

We will continue with the 'scratch-out' method as I have discovered that it is can give quite exciting results.

TODAY'S TASK - Use wet colour such as paints, inks and water soluble pencils to build up layers of textured colour.
This will record two elements within your observational frame -
The linear patterning and the main areas of colour.

- Start by making some 'scratch-out' marks on a plain paper.
- Then add colour with a large, soft brush and watch the burrs trap the colour. I used my Koh-i-Noor paints and the Stabilo pencils as you noticed yesterday.

Notice whether there is a colour difference within your 'frame', perhaps lighter at the top area and darker in the bottom area; maybe there is a difference  because of what you see behind your leaves/stems or maybe the top area is against the sky and the lower area darker because it is in the depths of the plant or surrounding plants. Use these observations to suggest what colours you use and where you place them - perhaps choosing only two or three at the most. Allow these colours to gently merge so that the boundaries are indistinct.

- Add more 'scratch-out' marks and then another layer of colour, perhaps not over the entire drawing. Be restrained and look at the colouring within your frame. The drawing below shows the added layers of 'scratch-out' and colour to the drawing above.

Further layers could be added tomorrow!

TODAY'S TIPS - It's easy to get carried away, making sweeping lines with your 'scratch-out' tool; try to make these marks reflect the general character and rhythm of your observed lines of the stems/leaves.
Try scratching out when the colour is dry and also when it is wet as you'll get different effects - you might be able to spot the differences in the top image.
Enjoy the fact that you can get 'two for the price of one' by closing your sketchbook  while the colour is still wet. When you add another colour, close it again and you will notice how the effect builds upon the opposite page too - sometimes more effectively!

Sketchbook Day 18 - jungle texture

Time to go out into the garden or bring a bit of garden indoors. If you do not have a garden, you could choose to work from a plant. Place a frame in front to select a view to draw. You are looking for small scale pattern - a sort of visual texture for this series of drawings.

Set up a frame in a position that you feel you can work at over the next few days. Both these two outdoor frames can be brought in if it rains.

 

The next three images show frames stuck to the window so you can work from indoors and the bottom left frame is placed over a house plant.

TODAY'S TASK -  A new sketchbook for me - without spiral binding this time!

Use a craft knife or a scalpel or a blade from a scissors to scratch marks onto the page surface. I can't show an image of this but only the results after the colour has been added!Use a dry marker for this - pastels, oil pastels, pencils.

I learnt about this 'scratching out' method in the 'Watercolour' exhibition at Tate Britain recently. Several 19th century painters used it by scratching back to the white paper - after the water colour paint had been applied, using any sharp tool such as a pin, needle, knife, quill or thumbnail. It was often used to suggest water ripples and texture of bridges - not really a major feature, but I'm sure we can take it a step further! I've tried it before and after applying the colour. You can get some quite impressive textural effects.

If using water soluble pencils, you could try blending with water - notice how the scratched 'burrs' of the paper surface seem to attract the colour.

TODAY'S TIPS - You will be able to add some of the methods over the next few days so don't feel you need to add all the information you can see at these first stages - just a generalised rhythm of lines.

Try holding your blade differently so the edge of your blade scrapes the paper surface to get wider marks.

Try using something else such as a sand paper perhaps?

More use of scraping tomorrow!