Summer Drawing Project – lesson 7

This week’s challenge is to make the paper surface appear to be curved. This will be an optical illusion of course but you can do this by covering your page with rings, each one changing in some way to suggest that the surface isn’t flat.

Discover ways of modifying your rings by gradually changing the way you draw it –

• changing its size
• changing its colour
• changing its tone, change its shape
• changing its texture
• perhaps combining more than one of these

Covering the surface with different sizes and different types of rings made interesting pattern effects but they didn’t seem to make the page look as if it was curved.

I decided that I needed to organise the gradation of sizes and shapes in these ideas so that they gradually change from one to another. See if you agree.

I found it easier to draw the rings shapes lightly in pencil first to help me get it right in coloured media. I covered the page with just one graded idea before deciding which colouring method to use. Notice that each ellipse and ring were sometimes drawn several times over each other until I felt the ring was right. No need to rub out – just work on top a bit darker over it when you think it looks better. You’ll notice a lot of rings underneath other rings in these pages –  this is just me trying to get into the right ‘swing’.

Making the rings appear to get flatter and flatter towards the top of the page and becoming more elliptical so seeming to disappear over the curved surface. Also by grading the intensity of colour.

 

Drawing the elliptical rings in the same way and because there seemed to be so many ‘trial’ rings on this page, I decided to draw pairs of over-lapping rings – a blue one and an orange one.  I then ‘coloured in’ by adding solid colour to the shape created by the overlap; see the right hand image close-up above.

  

This page is drawn with several rings where the sizes are graded from large to small (at the top). Several colours were used inside each ring to emphasise them. Notice the brave addition of ‘arc’ shapes towards the bottom to suggest rings that were too large to be added to the page. Best to draw these by turning the sketchbook around so you make good use of the natural radius arc that your arm can do to make a smooth and confident curved arc.

A pattern of rings of the same size, same colour but different textural scribbles and tonal changes from top to bottom.

 

Columns of over-lapping rings (draw vertical lines first to keep your rings in columns). Then look what happened when I stared to add colour. Must add more colour to make more of these lovely undulations. I’m sure there are more variations to be found.

Playing with a different composition of different sized rings I worked in black but added a change of texture by filling in the rings in different media. I couldn’t believe how this page seemed to curve!

A fun one to do – trying to make the perfect rings at the bottom look as if they are melting away towards the top of the page. I changed the shape gradually and made the colouring more and more watery. I sometimes dipped my water-soluble pencil into water to draw with; I sometimes wet the ring with clean water and then crayoned into it using different degrees of pressure.

The last mage shows an interesting drawing using rings of graded sizes. I found it in a book (‘Principles of Form and Design’ by Wucius Wong) and decided to try to copy it.

It looked like a 3D form – perhaps a cone with an inverted crater? I was fascinated to try to work out how to draw it. All the rings are separate – not spirals and you start with a small ring in the middle of a large ring and then add all the other rings. Anyone like to try it? And if you do, try it with colour?

Summer Drawing Project–lesson 6

This was one of my favourite childhood activities and it was probably one of yours too – colouring in!

You might have noticed that some of the ring drawings you did in the previous lesson made lots of enclosed shapes as well as some interesting background shapes.

These are just waiting for you to add colour to. You can of course do more drawings of rings if you don’t wish to work into your previous series of drawings.

As before, use a range of different media and work out different ways of colouring in those spaces. There are so many different ways of adding colour to a space. Try some of these and invent others yourself.

You can pop back to last weeks drawings to see how this new development stage has transformed them.

1 Add different colours to individual spaces, covering each space with solid colour. I started by placing my colours indiscriminately, choosing colours and spaces randomly. But then saw that it might be fun to put colours into spaces that made up complete rings. What other ‘shapes’ can you discover by selecting where you colour and where you don’t!

 

2 Add different colours as before but this time use a scribbling effect to create the effect of radiating lines to acknowledge some of the circles.

 

3  Add colour to the negative spaces between the ring shapes. This example below shows a scribble effect has been made using colours that reflect the colours of the rings themselves.

A second layer of coloured scribbles were added in the second image of this.

 

4  Add colour to the spaces in a graded way, starting by adding solid colour near the ring and working your crayon so that the colour becomes lighter and lighter – by pressing more lightly with your drawing marker. If using a crayon or pencil you will need to use less pressure and if using something like a felt pen or biro you will need to space out your marks so that some of the white page shows through. This sketchbook page below shows how different media can be used to do this inside ring shapes. It’s fun to see how these flat rings start to look like rounded shapes such as door knobs, balls, or even birds-eye views of cups and saucers perhaps.

 

Graded colouring can also be used in the spaces between shapes. The blue biro has been used to colour in the background spaces in the page below and be said to give the effect of making the rings look as if they are raised up as the background looks as if it’s sinking. The biro has also been used here to outline some of the white spaces inside the rings which I think makes the rings look like the classic rose design of the 1920’s. It’s surprising what you can discover in these exercises.

 

Different stages of graded colouring method using oil pastels – looking like bubbles or a quilted surface perhaps?

Remember the reverse side of a page in last weeks lesson where some wet colour showed through to the next page? Here the three rings have been ‘completed’ with oil pastels to suggest rounded ring shapes – perhaps odd-coloured doughnuts or life belts?

Maybe you have some ellipse shaped rings you can add colour to. Try this idea -

Put graded colour inside each ellipse – placing the stronger colour on the same side of each ellipse. (See the black ellipses.)

Add another elliptical ring outside each one and make the colour stronger on the opposite side of each ellipse. (See the blue ellipses.)

Perhaps you can start to see a row of holes – perhaps port holes in the curved side of a ship or a row of eyelets in a shoe?

 

If you would like to try adding colour using wet media, discover which of your drawing media responds to water. The rings on the page below, left, were drawn onto a page that had been wet with a clean paint brush. The rings were made with different felt pens, crayons and inks (plus fine paint brush). It was exciting to see how far the colour spreads and how some of the marks dried with interesting multi-coloured ‘tide marks’. The spaces in the rings in the page below, right, were made by individually wetting each space and then gently adding the colour and watching it seep into the wet shape. I think these coloured rings look like eye balls!

  

I hope you’ll have fun with your ‘colouring in’ and be inspired with the different things I’m sure you’ll discover.

Summer Drawing Project–lesson 5

Welcome to the first session of ‘Running rings around yourself’….

which asks you to draw rings – any size, any medium – but must be ‘free hand’ and not drawn around a template.

To be able to draw a good ring and not a wobbly one, you need to be standing and you need to work from your shoulder and not elbow or wrist.

Your hand should be free to swing as a weight on the end of a plumb line or the ball in a game of ‘swing ball’. You’ll notice in both these analogies, that the circular swing goes round several times. Let your arm do the same thing, not so much a spiral, but round and round on the same journey to smooth out any ‘blips’. I realise I was much better at the end of this exercise than at the beginning, so keep at it.

Draw ellipses as well (squashed-in rings) but keep up the smooth action from your elbow.and note that ellipses do NOT have points at each end – the line is rounded and continuous. See the third image below.

Use a page to draw lots of trial rings until you ‘get into the swing’ of it.

When ready, explore some of these possibilities and try out different pattern formations within your page each time.

1. Make rings using combinations of drawing media – pens, crayons, pastels, graphite stick, biro.
2. Make overlapping, linked chains of rings.
3. Make graded ellipses (I should have added a ‘perfect’ ring to the top of this row but ran out of page space in #3.
4. Use your media to make the rings look as if they are coming forwards or going backwards by grading each set of rings from a soft ring made by pressing lightly with a pencil or crayon on the outside ring  to a strong, bold crayon, pressed hard on the inside as here.

Of course you can combine any of these ideas on one page as further developments, so try them out for yourself.

 

Discover which of your drawing media will react to water. Paint clean water over a page (this will make it ripple if you have thin paper, but don’t worry)

Draw rings with different media and let it work (or not work). Accept any wobbles as part of the character of this method. You will need to let each page dry before turning over.

You will then know which media to use in the following ideas.

 

Above - Draw a pattern of rings onto a dry surface and then use plain water to paint onto it. Notice the reverse side of this page in the second image! (Waiting to be worked into next week!)

 

Above - Outside of rings drawn onto dry paper. Water painted onto each one and further rings of colour added inside each one. Notice the reverse side in the second image – which was too tempting not to work into when I turned over!

   

Above - Paint rings with clean water onto page (left) and before it dries, add coloured rings (right).

A happy accident  - before I discovered that my sketchbook pages were rather thin, these rings acquired some of the ‘wet’ colour from the next page.

It’s fun to look out for these and take advantage of them.