I always have trouble finding something to draw in the winter months when all the leaves and green things are hiding. A friend of mine suggested that you might have the same trouble, and that we take these months to draw studies of interesting things around the house. I think that’s both an excellent and challenging idea!
Lighting The Subject
One of the most important things to consider when setting up a still life is lighting. A drawing light about a foot away from your subject is probably at the right distance and angle, and should be a good brightness for lighting a small object.
For this drawing, I just put a sheet of paper on the arm of my chair under my drawing light, then placed my shell on it. I could have drawn from life, but I wasn’t comfortable in that position, so I took a photo on my iPad and used it to draw from. The photo is at the bottom of the page.
Form First
I used my brush blended technique on this drawing, which means that I brushed each layer of hatching with a small brush to blend it. I used Grafwood pencils on Arches Hotpress Watercolor paper because both complement this technique by helping to create a smooth looking texture.
I don’t intend to draw all the detail on this shell. Adding enough to give the illusion of a complete shell, which will include shadows, highlights, and 30-50% of the details, will be what I aim for.
I’ve discovered that the best way to approach a highly detailed subject is to make sure that the underlying form is well drawn. I did that by averaging the light and dark values and leaving out the extremes. Once that’s done, all the details on the surface can be erased or hatched-in as densely or as sparsely as you like, and the object will look real. I used 2H and HB pencils to lightly hatch the shell, and then brushed the hatching smooth.
The Highlights
I used a stick eraser (a Mono Zero) and a wedge-shaped rubber eraser (a Kemper Wipeout tool) to remove the main highlights. In a drawing with a lot of detail like this, it’s very easy to erase yourself back to a blank slate if you’re not careful at this stage, so I chose only the major details to erase beforehand and stuck to my plan. I have a tendency to overemphasize the first details of a drawing, so I was careful to keep the lines that I erased the correct widths.
The Dark Details
Using 2H and 4h pencils, I added the shadows and thin dark details around the highlights I chose to include in the last step, and a few more in other areas that I knew I wanted to develop later. I was careful to draw these details with the right value, if your details are too dark, they will catch the eye more than they should, making the surface appear mottled.
I wanted this drawing to be less detailed than a photo, but more detailed than this stage, so I decided to take it through another round of highlighting and dark detailing.
Highlights Revisited
In this stage I erased some subtle highlights over the entire shell, but most of the detail could be seen at the bottom, so I concentrated my work there.
The light catches the horizontal and vertical lines crisscrossing each other at the bottom of the shell. I thought they conveyed the essence of the shell’s texture, so I spent some time erasing dashes and stripes following the curvature of the shell. Because my erasing wasn’t perfect, however, I spent some time retouching my work with a sharp 4H pencil.
Dark Details Revisited
The same crisscross pattern was true for the dark details, so I added a few shadows around the outer edge of the shell but spent most of my time at the bottom of the shell again.
I added horizontal and vertical shadows and details with a sharp 4H pencil. I didn’t draw all of them because trying to capture each one just wasn’t feasible or fun, so I chose what attracted my eye most. Once again, I concentrated on keeping my marks the right value and width.
Final Round – Highlights and Dark Details Combined
Because I’d concentrated on the bottom of the shell in the last two steps, the rest of the shell was looking neglected by comparison, so I added highlight lines and texture shadows to the top of the drawing.
These details were all very light and close in value because this is where the light struck the shell most directly. I used a 4H pencil and the Mono Zero eraser that I’d cut into a fine point to draw and erase vertical lines, dashes, and dots.
Lastly, I added the smallest and brightest highlights with my electric eraser and then retouched them with a 4H pencil into more correct shapes.
How do you know when a drawing is done?
I like a drawing to have a sculptural sense of ‘weight’ and all parts need to be equally fleshed out, unless I intend to leave some areas under-drawn. I also have an upside-down test. If the drawing looks alright upside-down, I usually consider it done. How about you? How do you decide when a drawing is done?
Keep drawing everyone,
Carol
p.s.
My Sakura eraser came home! It’s being very smug about where it was and what it was doing, but I’m just happy to have it back. I’ve made it a new home in a colorful pouch where it can have all of its eraser nibs with it. Now I think it will be happier and less inclined to go wandering.
