Drawing – Materials in Practice
Join artist Mary-Rose Riley in a series of video tutorials about drawing practice.
This Materials in Practice series unpacks the material qualities, techniques and processes in drawing.
Download the Materials in Practice – drawing fact sheet (PDF 268 KB) for a summary of techniques, processes, and vocabulary covered in these videos.
Introduction to drawing
In this introduction video, you will learn about:
- charcoal (1:49)
- pastels (5:04)
- pens (8:23)
- pencils (10:49)
- erasers (15:54)
- paper (19:25).
Watch video 1, 'Drawing introduction' (21:21).
[Light music plays, screen reads 'Introduction'.]
Mary-Rose Riley
Hello, my name is Mary-Rose Riley. I'm a practising visual artist. I have a multidisciplinary practise, but today, I'm going to be talking about drawing.
Now what is drawing and what's the purpose of it? We begin to draw when we're very young. It's a natural thing to do. We draw even before we write. We are making our mark. We draw to understand the world in a clearer way. We notice the details more. You have to look very carefully if you're doing an observational drawing. So, you begin to understand. You might understand the person you're drawing a little better by looking at them for a long period of time. It expands our senses, our perception of the world. And something that the brain does is categorise everything so that 'cause we're bombarded with so many things. We kind of put things into groups. But drawing undoes a little bit of that and helps us relearn about the uniqueness of things, not just that that's a tree or that's a person, that's a beautiful pattern trunk. So, it expands our way of seeing the world. It's also a way to explore an idea. It may not be an observational activity. It might be a way to kind of unravel an idea that you've got in your mind. You can play, you can make any kind of marks. Drawing is something that enriches the way we live in the world.
We're going to talk a little bit about different drawing media. First of all, we have charcoal. Now charcoal comes in a couple of different forms. Willow stick charcoal. It's a stick from a willow tree. It's been made into charcoal for the purpose of drawing, so burnt in a particular way. And the kind of marks that this makes, it can be a little bit messy, but it makes a beautiful soft kind of black. You can build that up. Or you can use, just align in different ways. You can have a smaller piece. Use it on its side, so you can cover, you know, a large area in a short time with this. It's also very easy to erase and pull back a little bit, which we'll show a little bit later. The other form of charcoal is called compressed charcoal. It has a kind of a darker mark if you look at the difference between those two. So, you can build up quite a dense black with this one. It's called compressed charcoal because charcoal has been crushed and then reformed into a denser material. So, you see now, you can't see that it's wood and it's heavier to hold as well. You can also move this around. You know, it makes a bit of dust. You can do that with your finger or with another, with a rag or whatever. So, it can get these beautiful effects with that as well.
Charcoal also comes in pencil form. So, here's more of the compressed charcoal. It has a slightly different feeling about it. It has a narrower form, so you can bring this to a point more easily. And you can use it as you would a pencil. So, you can draw anything, you can do hatching, or you know, whatever, scribbling. It's quite a versatile form of charcoal, but you do have to sharpen this one because it's covered in a plastic coating, which you can see here. It also comes in white. This is a white charcoal pencil. So, you won't see it on this white paper, but if I was to draw over the black, you can see that you can then go back into your drawing with a lighter tone. This one is a conte pencil, and that comes in a few different colours and tones. This is known as sanguine. It's often used by artists for under drawings or for quick sketches because it has a different tone and colour. It's more of a midtone, whereas black is a very dark tone.
White is a very light tone. This acts as a midtone and can be very good for initial drawings or for finished drawings. Soft pastels come in many colours. Their vibrance is one of the great things about them. If we pull one of these out and I'll just make one mark. So, as you see, it goes down with a kind of a grain, but then it's possible to build this up so that you end up with quite rich colours if that's what you're looking for. And you can shift the type of colour that you make. You can use them on the side or you can use them as a, more direct kind of drawing medium. So, you can build up colour very quickly with soft pastel. And the layers, as you see, can build up terrific kind of textures and tones. Quite a strong mark.
There's a lot of pigment in good quality soft pastels. These are normally used on a bit of a rough surface, so paper that has a little bit of a, what we call a tooth. If it's too shiny, these will just slide off. You won't be able to draw with them. So, it gathers the pigment onto the paper. A little bit like charcoal, you can end up with a lot of dust. So, a couple of things to remember. Try not to blow the dust away. It's better to wipe it or drop it over a bin 'cause you don't want all that dust in the air. See all that dust. It's possible to use all of that again to further the drawing. You might push that into one of the others to get a bit of green. Depending on how thickly you apply it, there's a little bit of transparency that's possible with this as well. As you can see, the layers of colour build up.
Now here we have oil pastels. As the name suggests, a very oily kind of quality. So, they're more permanent in a way than soft pastels. These oil pastels, you can push around. Let's put some down. Let's put some down. And the higher the quality, the more pigment is in them and the thicker they become. And all of these you can layer as well to shift the colour. You can use them kind of softly as line and they'll go over all kinds of other mediums. They're also water resistant. So, if you were to use a water-based wash over the top, these would resist and they would come forward. So, the oil pastels tend to come forward in a drawing. So, the more you build them up, the more you have the possibility also of pushing them around a little bit. There'll come a point where you can no longer build them up, but these are also good if you don't want to use them in that painterly way. They're also good for just straight drawing. If you're doing a strong kind of line drawing, they're beautiful for that. Or if you want to introduce colour to a drawing in a different way or have a colour stand out from the rest of what's already there, these are also good for that.
Now we'll have a look at the different kinds of pens that we might use as a drawing medium. As a drawing tool, they're very handy. For a start, you can have one in your bag or in your pocket and immediately take it out and begin to draw. They make a beautiful mark. Could be any kind of pen, could be one of these, you know, different colours. You've got four pens in one in you. I used to love these pens as a kid. There we go.
Then you've got individual coloured pens, like this red one that's normally used for corrections, but it's another way to draw.
Then we've got things like markers. The old, you know, Posca ones that might be familiar. They have a tip that you then press down on. I'm going to do it on there because it's a white one. We'll demonstrate that later on some black pens that are fine. This is like a little felt tip pen. Look at that beautiful line that that makes. It can also be used for fine kind of hatching. You might have one of those with you when you go out into the world and do some drawing or you see a pattern and you want to do a quick drawing, get some texture in there with this.
The felt tip pens, there's all kinds of felt tip pens on the market that are thicker and thinner. There's another. And there are also, you know, heavier markers like this. This one here, it'll give you a good strong line or you can fill in areas if you want a pop of colour in your drawing. It's quite fine to layer different mediums. And this one is a strong one to kind of add. This kind of pen is a strong one to add or a black marker. They come in different thicknesses, widths of tip. Very basic textures. This is a white pen that you would use on black or brown paper. So that gives you a bit of an idea of the variety of pens that you might use for drawing.
Pencils might have been the first thing you ever drew with. Maybe a coloured pencil like this, a red one. Often the one first chosen. They are a really versatile medium. The different colours, of course, that's very direct. You can carry them easily with you. If materials are short, they're a great way to bring, to use all the different ways to kind of draw the different elements. You can use colour, you can use shapes, you can use tone. As you can see it goes from light, dark, to much lighter. A beautiful medium. And in children's drawings, you'll notice that particularly that when we're children, we love to kind of fill up the page with colour and choose a favourite colour. So, you know, it might be a shape that you draw. You might go back in with details. You know, there's all sorts of ways to use a pencil. Oh, look at this fancy one with all those colours. If you want kind of instant texture in your work, perhaps you've got one other medium. You might have, you know, a pen and you want to put some colour in. Something like this is handy to have. Look at that. Beautiful. They come in all kind of feels. Some are very waxy and some have a high pigment content. Now the waxy ones tend to fade a little bit in the light. They're great for in sketchbooks. But the ones with the higher pigment, and you can go online to find out which ones are which in that sense. But say for senior students who might want to find out which ones have a higher pigment content and they will tend to fade less easily than the wax ones.
Moving on from there, we have the graphite or grey lead pencil. It's often known as the grey lead pencil. And they also come in many different forms. They're graded on a scale of, you might have seen a 6H to a 6B. What does that mean? So, H is the hardness of them. If you start with a mid-range pencil, that will be a HB, this one here. And it will give you just a line that is not too dark, not too light. It won't smudge too easily. It's a good all-purpose kind of basic drawing tool. If you were doing the early stages of a drawing, for instance, you can use it quite in a quite lightly in this way. Or it also has the versatility to go quite dark, but you can't go very dark with this. That's where you'll need to go into the B's. So, B for black. Let's go right over to this 6B here, which is very black. You'll notice the difference here when I draw, when I make that mark as opposed to that mark. I can also go quite softly with that. But if I have my hand on there, it tends to smudge very easily. And sometimes that's what you want in a drawing. You might do that on purpose. But it also can go, you know, you can get those rich shiny blacks. And because it's graphite, it's quite a shiny material. So, if you don't want the shininess, you might choose something less black. If you want to achieve a softer mark, you'll go into the H range. And here we have a 2H. And to give you an idea, it's quite a light mark. The lead itself is quite hard, but it gives a lighter mark. So, you might build it up or you might have just a fine. The harder you press, of course, you'll get it a little bit darker. But generally speaking it's a fairly light mark. And remember that the possibilities of the H pencil go right back to 6H. So, you can imagine that's very light if you're doing design work or a tentative first drawing of something. And for the juniors, I would recommend that you stay around the HB range. HB is the good general kind of pencil. But if they want a little bit more softness or a little bit more darkness, you might go up to the 2B or the 4B. They can smudge into it. And for the seniors, I think it's a good idea to try the whole range so they can make a choice about the kind of drawing that they want to make.
There are a few different erasers that you can use here. We use erasers to, I guess you could say you're making a negative mark. So, it can be used to make corrections, yeah, but it's also, if you see it as, in a positive way, as a way to make a mark into something that you've already drawn. For instance, charcoal or graphite. They're the two main things that we would use an eraser for. So, let's have a look. First we have the plastic eraser, which is a hard kind of eraser that you can really kind of get some power behind to erase marks. Let's see what happens if I erase the willow stick charcoal here. You can virtually take the whole thing off like this.
The downside of the plastic eraser on a drawing that you've already made is that it leaves little bits and pieces on the page and we're so tempted to kind of swish it off and the whole drawing is like smudged. So, the alternative to the plastic eraser is this kneadable eraser. Now some of them come in a little box like this to keep them clean because the thing about them is they absorb the charcoal or the graphite into the body of the eraser. And as you can see, they're called a kneadable eraser because you knead them like dough, K-N-E-A-D. As it picks up the charcoal, you can see it's softening that tone there a little bit lighter. It just sits on the surface, and after a while, it becomes shiny and will just slide about. So, then you go back in and you knead it into the centre of the eraser regularly while you're drawing and then it's ready to go. And surprisingly it can absorb quite a lot of this black substance. Let's have a look on the willow charcoal, how it, look at that, takes it straight off.
There's different ways that you can use this. You can also form it into a point to do quite fine work. You can actually draw lines with it. But you need to remember to knead. All right, you can also just pick it up like that. Look at that. It's taken a lot of it off. With the compressed charcoal, it's a little more difficult, but you can lighten the tone as I said before.
It's important to make sure that you have a clean eraser, especially either with this one to knead it. But with a plastic eraser, before you begin, I would recommend that you, you know, if there's any graphite or charcoal or anything already on it, that you actually get a scrap of paper. We'll pretend this is a scrap. And clean the surface of the eraser by just rubbing it off like that. And you end up with a clean tip. If you find that the eraser becomes quite round, you can also kind of slice a bit off to have a sharp edge too. These are cuttable.
So, this is another plastic eraser. It's a bit harder, has a different kind of shape. Now let's talk about paper. So, when considering the choice of paper, there are three main things to think about. The weight of the paper, how heavy or light it is, the texture, the surface texture. It could be smooth or rough. And the colour that you select according to the medium that you're going to use. The weight of the paper is measured in GSM, which means grammes per square metre. So, the lower the number, the lighter the paper. The higher the number, the heavier and more robust the paper generally tends to be. There is the option of selecting a non-white paper. For instance, you might choose a brown.
There is a midtone or another midtone colour like this one here, so that you can use lighter and darker drawing mediums on that surface and they show up. If you selected black paper, you could use this, use white mediums on this paper. Chalks, some, you know, white pens so that you can work in reverse or work with subjects that have mostly light elements on a dark background. One thing you may not have thought to do is to use a prepared paper. So, you can do anything to the surface of the paper before you go into it with drawing. This is one that's part of, actually part of an old painting that I've decided to use as a basis for a drawing. So as you can see, there's a whole selection of papers to choose from and surfaces to work on. And from here, you can begin your art making.
[NSW government logo.]
[End of transcript]
Drawing practice
Continue the series of tutorials about drawing practice with videos 2–8.
Watch video 2, 'Setting up' (2:01).
[Light music plays, screen reads 'Setting up'.]
Mary-Rose Riley
Before beginning work, you might want to consider the setup of the space. And some materials are messier than others, so I would suggest that you cover the surface that you're working on to protect it. It could be with newspaper, it could be with brown paper like this, or a plastic cloth, if you have that.
The next thing to think about is how much you've got on the table, and you only need the medium that you're working with, keep it as minimal as possible. And also, the position that you work in. You could be working flat as in the classroom. Just be sure to, you know, be as comfortable as you can and regularly get up and have a look at your work. You know, you might step back and hold it up and see where it's up to, so that you get a good view of it regularly while you're working. You might use a clipboard, such as this, where you would take that outside with you to work or working on your lap, if there isn't a table available. And that's good for small works, or you might prefer to work standing up at an easel such as this
Now, I'm looking at this setup. It isn't quite where I think it needs to be. You need to be aware of the ergonomics and being comfortable. So, I'll move this a little bit further this way. And this is our subject, you imagine. So that when I'm looking at my drawing, I don't have to turn very far to see the subject, so I'm not stressing my body.
Make sure that there's enough room to be able to step back behind you and that the other side of the easel isn't disturbing somebody else and that they might trip over it.
[NSW government logo.]
[End of transcript]
Watch video 3, 'Shapes and tones' (14:22).
[Light music plays, screen reads 'Shapes and tones'.]
Mary-Rose Riley
For this drawing, I'm going to be using basic shapes to create a drawing. I'm using a 2B graphite pencil and I have my sharpener and eraser ready to go. But at this point, I'm not going to be using the eraser. In fact, I may not use it at all. It's more about kind of getting the feel of what I'm drawing rather than making it perfect.
Okay, so to begin with, I'm looking at this shell. And I'm going to just make a kind of a, you know, very simple oval shape. It has a bit of a point at that end, but mostly it's kind of like a big oval. Then, I'll look at the angle that it sits on. So, I can use my pencil to kind of imagine a clock face. And that's about, you know, 2:30. So I've got it at about the right angle coming down here. So, I'm going to break it down now a little bit. The top shape of this shell kind of is like, there's a kind of fruit shape there, as you can imagine that, and it dips down to that point here. And this bowl, part of the shell is kind of sits like this. It's a fairly even curve and goes up on the right. So, all I'm doing is initially just getting the feel of this object. Then, I'm going to divide the front bit of this shell, make a bit of a mark down there, and it kind of has a gap here between those two shapes. So, I'm just going to hint, make a hint, you know, draw a hint of that.
And one of the things to notice when you're drawing, just to notice where the line changes direction. And if you think about the vertical and the horizontals, where things are in relation to those two axes, that's very helpful too. So, I'm going to kind of tip this up here, move around, I'm noticing, even though it's a rough drawing at this stage, I'm still observing quite carefully what's going on and I'm noticing that I'm already miss seeing. So, this is where I don't worry about the lines that are already there. I just keep drawing to get to a point where the lines that I know are looking more like the actual shell begin to show themselves.
And I'll step back at this stage just to kind of get a feel of what's happening so far, back in again. The other thing that's helpful to think about is what we call negative shapes. So, it's the space between the solid part of the object. So, in this case, you could say that the inside section of the shell is like a negative shape. And also the outside, like these shapes that are made here. And at this point, I'm going to also put in the edge of that box to give me a little bit of a reference as well. So, I will just go across there. I'm going to estimate how far out it goes at this point. So, we've got this across to here maybe, and there's a bit of an angle that's like a, you know, almost 1:00 here.
So, once I've got the basic feel of the drawing, this one is virtually 12:00 because I'm looking directly down that line, down that side of the box. But all right, with the basic drawing there. So, I can just see the back of the box there. So, I'll just pop that there and there isn't much of an angle on that. All right, once I've got that, as soon as I step back, of course, my view of the shell will change. So, it's more to kind of train my memory, look at that, see if that's working and go back in. I'm going to start to really kind of trust the movement of my hand. This actually sits a bit further back here. So, the more you look, the more you notice.
Now it's looking like a bit of a mess of lines at the moment. And there is a kind of a straight line here. Let's see, it's further out. See, I'm always correcting. Here, we've got a bit of there's a couple of little prongs that come out there from the shell. I'll just put those tentatively and go around there. Now tonally, if you want to put in a little bit of tone, you can start to kind of fill in. It's a little bit darker in the middle, so I'm just going to scribble in a little bit there. Some of the tones run into each other here, gets a bit lighter as it comes out again. It's a funny little curly bit there that hides behind there, goes kind of on an angle across to here and over to there. And this, the section here in the front, is actually darker than this. Now if you want to kind of simplify what you're looking at, you can squint at it, it kind of gets rid of some of the detail and it starts to just look like basic shapes and tones. If you want to, because you're translating a three-dimensional object onto a two-dimensional sheet of paper, to cut out that third dimension, you can shut one eye. The reason why we can see three dimensions is because we've got that crossover vision. So, if you close one eye while you're drawing, it looks a bit weird where you're squinting and shutting one eye, but it helps to simplify the subject. I'm not going to worry too much about just looking for basic shapes really. Still at this stage but rather than doing an outline, I'm starting to do blocks of tone. So, they become a flat shape as if you're cutting out of paper. All right.
Now because the plinth is darker than the shell, I kind of feel inclined to actually just draw in that negative space and define the edge of this by darkening the space around. I'm going to just do a bit of a line. But then, see with the 2B pencil, you can go quite dark. Now that I've established the shapes, I might do the whole thing like this and I'll just begin this process. And it doesn't matter, you know, how you use, which way you direct it, you might want to do more directed kind of marks, you know, that follow the line of the shell. Now, one thing that I'm noticing is that there is a darker shadow around the outside. So, I'm working in this way because beyond the object itself, the context that it's in is also something to consider. I'm just going to bring it down to the edge of that box rather than going all the way down or I'll be here all day. And then, you've got those two little pointy bits. One is further in than the other.
Okay, just by that little definition of shape, that negative shape, you start to get the feel of that end of the shell. And I think I have come way too high up there, so I'm going to redefine that.
All right, so I'm just going to check the angle of the position of this shell. So, if I look at some relative points, if I look between that point and that point, and from where I'm standing, it's an angle like that. So, if I look at that angle, if I turn that around, that's, you know, 2:30, something like that. Or again, the clock face is handy to note. And as you can see, hold on, let's check that again. Yeah, it's not much more than 2:00 actually. So 2:00, maybe something like that. So that's not too bad. I've got that there. It's one way to check. Let's draw that line in there.
So, I'm starting to get the feel of where I want the line to be. It's changed direction, it's heading up and up and towards that point there. And then, it kicks out. So, you're continually adjusting. I'm going to bring that over there. There's a kind of a kick there. And then, it comes out from below again and does another little kick and does a third little kick. And then, it's the last one that does that. So, there's this, I mean, it isn't that defined over here but that's all right.
There's a bit of a shadow in there. There's a bit of a shadow in there. We'll just start with that to define that. But if you just consider this as not that there's a twirl in the shell, but the line moves from here to here, the shape moves from there to there. Hmm, I have a feeling this has got to come down.
Now that I'm looking at it, it should be a little bit higher. So, in this case, I'm going to actually erase this because it's a little too distracting. So, you can resort to your eraser if you find that it's getting in the way of you being able to understand what it is that you need to draw. Okay, that's quite narrow there. It starts narrow, and then suddenly it drops down. So, I'll have to redefine these. It's up there somewhere and there somewhere, and like that.
Now in the end, when you make a drawing, people aren't going to see what you've just drawn when they're looking at your drawing. So don't stress too much about getting it exactly right. It's a drawing, it's an image, it's not an actual thing in the world. So just enjoy it as much as anything else. All right, this is darker and this is darker still.
So, you know, once you start playing with tone and shape, you begin to lose the idea that you're trying to create a particular thing. You're just putting shapes together. You are noticing how things relate, how shapes and lines relate to each other. Now remember that the information is here, not here if you need to find out what's going on. Look at your subject as often as you can, more often than your paper really.
Okay, now if you were using charcoal or soft pastels or oil pastels, you would be able to cover this area a lot faster and put the shapes in. This takes a little more time, but it depends what effect you want to create. You are initially mapping out some basic shapes of the whole of the thing that you're drawing, the context that it's in. And then, you'll start to build up the tones to create kind of stronger shapes.
And finally, you might pick out a couple of details at the end, but you may not even need to. You might just end up with a kind of a gentle drawing of the shapes that make up the shell. At the end, if I wanted to, I could erase any lines that aren't working for me, but I'm kind of enjoying seeing the history of the drawing come through from the start to the end.
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[End of transcript]
Watch video 4, 'One-point perspective' (12:33).
[Light music plays, screen reads 'One-point perspective'.]
Mary-Rose Riley
For this drawing, we're going to look at perspective as a way of mapping out a space. And here we're using a reference image of a street. And perspective is a method of drawing the world from one point of view. So, my perspective of this room, for instance, as soon as I move to the side or, you know, bob down, it will change. So, you're in one place. And as you can see in this image, you know when you take a photo, you're in one place.
So, it's quite handy to use a photograph as a reference. The main thing to remember about perspective as a principle is that as things get further away, they appear to be smaller to our vision and to cameras. So, if you remember that, that things get smaller the further away they are, that is very useful for this exercise.
One thing to consider when talking about perspective is what we call the horizon line. So, normally the horizon is where the sky and the earth meet, or the sea or whatever. In this context, the horizon line is basically your eye level. So, everything visually above your line of sight and below meet at that parallel line. If you look at this image here, they all converge, all of these parallel lines. Like in reality, you know, this building doesn't contract like this as it gets further away. If you were on the looking side on, they would all be parallel, but they appear to all converge to a point at eye level, which is called the vanishing point.
So, it's where all the lines vanish away into the distance. They seem to kind of vanish to this point. So, for this drawing, I'm going to use a ruler, two coloured pencils, and I'll have my sharpener ready. Probably won't need the eraser, but we'll see how we go. So, one of the pencils is going to draw the converging horizontal lines over here and the other one will fill in the verticals. But we'll start with the converging lines, the ones that meet at the vanishing points. So, first we have to work out where the vanishing point is. Let's try this side. Here, So, what I'm doing, I'm lining my ruler up with the various horizontal lines. So, it looks like they're all converging. And if I go intersect there and go over here, my eye level is just above that car. For the sake of making this easier, I'm actually going to put a mark there. I'll make it, I'll do it in the dark blue, it's a bit easier to see. Just imagine that's my drawing, my vanishing point. And it looks like it's kind of in the middle of the page, a bit lower than centre.
So, that's where I'm going to place it here. Let's pop it about here, all right? We'll make that the vanishing point and we'll start with that. So, to make these lines, all I need to do is measure from the vanishing point along that line and look at each, let's start with that top one. This is all over the place. That's not a parallel line. That's not a horizontal line, that's the edge of the roof. So, we'll ignore that. So, if we go up to this one, if you imagine, again, that's a clock face. So, that's, you know, about 1:00. So, let's pop a line at about 1:00 here. We'll just do that. That's all you need to do to begin. The next one, now eventually, you can see that that line doesn't go all the way to the vanishing point, but we're just going to start with that and you might cut back on that in the end. You might erase that, sorry. All right, the next one is a little bit further along. Let's just move there's right across here and go like that.
So, all you're basically doing is making these lines that radiate out of that vanishing point. Let's go to the other side now. The other side of the road, we'll start with that one, that's probably the most obvious. We'll move that straight across. Look at that, it almost lines up with the other one. Whoop, there, there. So, that's, you know, kind of just 9:30 or sSo, depending on which side of the clock you're talking about. And then, we'll go that low one there. That's just, okay, we'll move that across. The clock face is handy because you don't have to remember the angle visually. You can then take this away and go, "Oh yeah, it was like 4:00 or it was 11:00." Something that's kind of a handy tool and a way to make a perspective drawing, if you're not using a reference image and you want to create a single point perspective drawing with buildings or whatever is to use a piece of string or tape like this and a pin, you'll need a pin. So, wherever you want the vanishing point to be, in this case there's one, single one, you would put the pin in the paper, tie your string to it, and just rule some of these lines So, that they become the parallel lines.
So, that's a great way to create perspective, the parallel lines through a perspective drawing. And then, as you'll see, when we start to add the vertical lines to divide this into different buildings and different shapes, these are a little easier because you're just relying on the angles, but measuring the vertical lines are a bit trickier. So, you might need to just do a little bit of checking the proportions. How wide is this compared to this? For instance, you know, from there to there is less than from there to there. So, you start to kind of just calculate a little bit where those lines will be. But let's put some in. So, we've got a bit of a gap. If you look at this page, it's less than a third in the middle. So, we've got, if we put the first line, say somewhere here, let's just go with that. This drawing has all kinds of complicated things going on in it. So, I'll just to give you an idea, we'll start to, we'll put another one, and let's use the ruler. Let's just do that as a reference point that I've got here. It isn't quite like that, but we'll move a little bit further along to about there. You can estimate this and we've got a line that comes down here. But then, there's a break, there's two lines there and there's a line under there.
So, let's just do a basic, something like that. That then begins to break up that space. Actually, we'll go right to the top. Let's just go right through. And then, the next lines don't go all the way along. They only go here. So, we can put a few of those in, but you just come to this point each time. And for the purpose of this, we'll just estimate. So, remembering the rule that things get smaller the further away they are, they appear to be smaller, that width is going to be less than this width, which is closer to us. So, just kind of, you know, you do that line a little bit more for the next one, a little bit more for the next one. If you were measuring this, you would use all the, you know, ways of measuring. But for now, you could just do that and already it starts to look like what's going on here. Okay, and in the end, this doesn't go any further. So, what I'm going to do, at this point, is erase those lines So, they're not distracting us. So, from there, we'll go, we'll just do a line down there for that building. There's a lot going on there and from the vanishing point it's about halfway towards the edge. So, we'll do that. And the beginning of it is halfway between those two. We'll do that. And again, I'll erase this.
So, just using that simple method of horizontals and verticals, knowing where the vanishing point is is important. So, if you were to finish this drawing off and it was just a very simple, you would start to define these edges and decide what you're going to do with the bits in between. So, you might begin to cut that off from the rest, for instance. And it ends up looking like a street vanishing in front of you. It's a very simple approach that you can then develop into more of a drawing. We've got these beautiful tracks that almost come towards you, but there's a curve in them. So, they're not going to work with a ruler. So, it comes towards us, just that side of the horizon line. So, we might start here and there's just, and it ends up just that side of that corner. So, you can keep kind of checking the proportions of the actual image as well as you go. And from here, I can see that much and it kind of curves. You can just guess this and it comes off the page about there. The other one, you might notice that that's narrower than this because I mean, in reality, they're parallel. You know, they're the same distance apart. But visually, they look like they get smaller. So, remember when you bring the other line in, we'll go from just that side of there and we'll start there and it changes direction very quickly and goes off that bit of the page.
There, something like that. This series of posts, they get bigger each time. So, that one is just across from here. The biggest post, if I just do a line is something like this. And it goes right down to about there. Even if we just do that, the next line is halfway along this space here and it's the top of it. The top of those say we've got the top of that there. The top of the posts will all line up as well. I'll just do a very soft line there and the bottom as they seem to be in a straight line. So, the next one, we've got about halfway between here. So, it will start there and end down there. You've got your ruler, draw a line. The next one you can check your reference. It's almost at the outside of the building. So, you'll notice that they're getting closer and closer because the distances get smaller and smaller the further away they are. And let's just pop a couple more in. That one and a bit less again, let's see how that looks. Very simple approach that you can then develop into more of a drawing. Yeah, single-point perspective. So, you've got your vanishing point where all of the parallel lines join and your horizon line, which intersects that vanishing point, which is your eye level.
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[End of transcript]
Watch video 5, 'Reduction method' (5:09).
[Light music plays, screen reads 'Reduction method'.]
Mary-Rose Riley
For this drawing, we'll be using a reduction method using willow stick charcoal and a kneadable eraser. This will pick up the charcoal and not leave any bits on your page. We're using a simple reference image of this vase and I'm going to just outline quickly the main tones of this drawing by removing the charcoal from the surface.
So, I'm just looking at this. This is like a nice negative space. I'm going to just pick this all up. It's something to start with. And the vase is kind of here, so I want to get to that point where, ah, lots of kneading. And this is about, you know, a bit more than halfway down that line there. So, let's just pull that off. It's... If the vase is here, it... There is something that's helpful when you want to, when you want to know where a shape ends or is to kind of think about the proportions on the page, whereabouts it is.
So, I'm just going to say that it's there. There's a bit of a gap where that tone goes into that tone, so I'll leave that, but you don't have to get too particular just yet. Ah, it's quite a lot of charcoal on this one. I'll do that little shape there. See there's a little kind of shape? And that continues around. There's a fine line that kind of goes, and then it sweeps around down the side and down there somewhere. So, let's take all this away up to about here where that line continues. We'll just go off the page. We won't worry about that little. Okay. So, depending on how white you want the surface to be in the end, you'll take various amounts of this off. Now you can leave the rest of that till the end if you like. There's a kind of a shadow shape here. So, we've got... You can also use your fingers if you want a more subtle way of taking off the... So, we want a fairly strong line there. And then you'll notice that, alright, we'll do the lip, the lip of the vase comes around here, something like that. And this, there's a little bit of light on it there. So, we'll leave that there and we'll work out. It comes to about halfway along here.
So, let's just divide that. You can soften that up later. And yeah, you've got the colour of the vase here, but you don't necessarily, let's just treat it as a whole, as a whole form. And we can add that later if we want to put that in. So, I'm just going to make, in the end, I'm going to make the tablecloth slightly lighter than the vase itself, which means I don't want too much or it looks like it's the other way around. So, close, you could choose which way you want to go. So, let's make the vase slightly lighter. That comes down to here.
Then it is still slightly lighter than the shadow over here. So, depending on how much you take off, you can be fairly subtle with this system. And then we've got that hard line there of the shadow. So, there, I'm at the base of the vase and I'll take that line across there. And already with this lovely method, you very quickly have an image emerge. If I want the vase to remain darker, I can always add. Or if I want to darken the area at the back, I can always add a little more charcoal. If this shape doesn't work for me, I can put charcoal back in.
So, it's quite a forgiving medium and you don't need to worry about getting it right before you even begin. So, this is a very quick way to put an image down by using this subtractive method, by taking charcoal off rather than adding a material to your page and you end up very quickly with an atmospheric and recognisable image.
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[End of transcript]
Watch video 6, 'Tone and texture techniques' (6:57).
[Light music plays, screen reads 'Tone and texture techniques'.]
Mary-Rose Riley
For this demonstration, we're going to be looking at different ways to create tone and texture with these materials here, mostly. We have soft pastels and oil pastels. I've got a few tools to use as well. Rags, an eraser, a toothbrush, and a normal brush. We'll see what we can do. Oh, and these, they're kind of like masking edges. Edges for masking. We'll look at those in a minute. And stencils.
We'll start with creating a simple block of graduated colour. So, you might take a pastel like this one and use it flat, just to kind of build up an area. Now, any texture that you've got on the paper or on the board will come through, but you can actually build that up by going in a bit harder at one end. I'm now drawing with more of the tip and graduating across to a softer, and softer line, depending on how much tone you want. So, you can go quite dark at one end and move across. As you can see, there's a lot of dust. We'll leave that be for the minute. Okay. That's with the soft pastel. Let's try it with oil pastels.
Now, oil pastels are a little more, they're not as kind of, you know, they won't cover a whole area at once, so we'll have to use a kind of hatching technique. So, hatching is where you use a series of parallel lines and then you'll go in a different direction to increase the tone. And you might go a third one to increase it even more. Let's have a go. All right. Let's go right across here. The further apart they are, the lighter it appears. And then we'll try a little bit more across two-thirds of it. Let's do to about there. So, this area is a bit darker. And if I go through a third direction, through half of it, it will make it even darker.
So, that's a technique you can use for different areas. I mean, you can do that, you can kind of refine that a little bit. You can do lighter marks closer together. You can make these lighter. You can vary that yourself, but it gives you. And then I'll go through a fourth, if I make this super dark. We can just about cover all that space. So, that's a way to do it by crosshatching. That's with the oil pastel. There's different kind of terms that we use when we're using a different technique in terms of the action.
And one of them is stippling. And stippling, it sounds a bit like it is. It's basically, creating texture. You might use this if you were drawing something quite textured, even if it's a, you know, a plant, or a basket, or your jumper, or just an idea. You know, it kind of gives a feeling, those dots. It stimulates the optic nerve, so they're kind of fun. Dots are always fun to play with. And if you want to build those up, you can just go in with another colour. If you want to change the colour. And, you know, this is something that the impressionists did.
They kind of did small dots of lots of colours.
So, made the image vibrate a little bit with the colour. Yeah. Okay. Let's go with that. One of the lovely qualities of soft pastel is that they create a bit of dust, and we can take advantage of that. Let's get this beautiful, watermelon kind of colour. I might do it here, otherwise, it'll cover the rest of that area. So, we can do this. And if you're working flat, this will be different, it won't drop this easily. But what you've still got is some dust on the surface. And we're going to take a bit of rag, and you can start to kind of use that to expand the space and play with tone in that way. You can go back in and create more texture. If you want, you can even use a toothbrush for that. You know, it gives a bit of texture in there. You can use a paintbrush. You can push it around with this. It's actually quite a lovely feeling.
Feels like you're painting with pink powder. It's beautiful. All right. And then, when you have some of this on your cloth, let's get a little bit more off. Look, you can rub that back and lighten that tone quite a bit. A little bit like with the eraser and the charcoal. Let's make an edge. There's different ways to make an edge in your image. If you have a hard line and you want to create a tone one side and keep it very fresh and white on the other side, let's see what happens when I use this as an edge. and you can put as much on as you want, but you get a lovely clean edge to work with. That could be, I mean, you could play with making up an image using this idea. You could put others over the top. It could be a straight edge that you use.
This as an old bit of painting that I thought I could use as an edge. This is a heavier piece of card if you use it a lot. And then there's the idea of the stencil, which is basically the same idea, but you can use a more complicated situation where you could do the inside. You know, you could create, you could cut quite a fine stencil and use that as a textural surface on something. You know, you start to get those beautiful kind of edges coming through with the soft pastel. So, that's a little bit about creating tone and texture in your drawing.
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[End of transcript]
Watch video 7, 'Storage and packup' (1:13).
[Light music plays, screen reads 'Storage and packup'.]
Mary-Rose Riley
At the end of the session, you'll have your finished work and maybe some works in progress, and you'll need to store it somewhere. And you can store it flat on a rack like this, or you might prefer to store it vertically, so you would put it in a folder such as this. Just a simple card folder. And you can put a number of those in a pigeonhole or wherever your storage is.
If you're storing your work in a folder, just make sure that you put paper between to protect the surface if you are using charcoal or soft pastels. Take the covering off the table, clean up your space, put your materials away.
If there's any chalk or pastel or charcoal, you would preferably clean that up with a damp cloth so you don't get dust everywhere. And leave the space looking spotless for the next class.
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[End of transcript]
Watch video 8, 'Resolved work' (3:06).
[Light music plays, screen reads 'Resolved works'.]
Mary-Rose Riley
Let's have a look now at some resolved works that illustrate some of the techniques that we've been talking about.
First up, there is this one, and that one I worked on black paper using a white charcoal pencil. So, as you can see, there was a lot of, this dog moved a little bit. It was a portrait of a friend's dog. And so initially it was hard to catch him still. And eventually I pulled out just the lines that I felt illustrated his personality and what was going on at the time. This one, this drawing here, is of my garden. And I began by blocking in areas with coloured pencil. So, it was the various greens and the colours that stood out to me.
So, you might choose a medium that's appropriate to the subject. And it allowed me to just block in the different plants, the different trees. You can see I built up some texture in that bush in the front there. And then, because it was winter, the lines were very beautiful and they jumped out to me. So, I went back in with this graphite pencil, which was probably a 4 or 6B, to make it nice and black. So, here we have an oil pastel drawing.
Now, these oil pastels are water soluble, so you can go in with those strong marks with the oil pastel making the shapes, but then the water will help kind of disperse that colour a little bit. And once I had the main areas of colour down, it's a bit like using the shapes that we talked about, I went back in, similar to this, with the pencil, but here I went in with compressed charcoal to highlight the shadows, the tread, just to pull those out a little bit more./ From there, oil pastels again. This portrait is a build up of oil pastel, it's just to give you an idea of how you can really kind of layer those colours and end up with that luscious, smooth surface.
Don't be afraid to press hard with your oil pastel, or softly, and bring out, you can see this paper has some texture, so it's kind of nice to use them to accentuate the texture in the clothing as opposed to the skin.
So, here we have explored a number of different techniques and you've seen how some of the media can be used in finished drawings. And I hope you enjoy your exploration of drawing.
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[End of transcript]
Materials in practice series
Explore other art making techniques in the Materials in Practice series:
- Acrylic painting with Courtney Young
- Ceramics with Kerrie Docker
- Digital illustration and animation with Indy Boag
- Printmaking with Liz Perfect
- Studio photography with Ben Eyles