Drawing materials: pencil, pen, ink, crayon, and paper.
Methods:
Line enriches areas of a work of art through value contrasts and invented textures. At times invented textures have their source in nature, but undergo a metamorphosis, an abstraction, in the hands of artists who change them according to the requirements of their work.
A) Find at least five black-and-white, good-quality copies of a single object with an interesting outside contour. Several objects in a reproduction are acceptable if you can see the entire shape of most of the objects. The objects must have a full range of value: highlights, light grays, dark grays, and blacks. Avoid symmetrical, commonplace objects such as bottles. Also, don’t use thin objects with little or no appearance of volume. The objects should also have varied, active outside contours.
B) Practice drawing your object in light pencil line, enlarging the form, deciding about size, figure-ground relationships, and placement within a given format. It is often effective, in the final form of the problem, to stress the bulges of the surface, the outside and cross-contours.
C) After establishing a satisfactory linear image, divide it lightly with pencil with approximately one-half-inch boxes. These might be horizontal, vertical, diagonal, follow the cross contour of the object, or be strictly your own invention. You may vary the distance between the boxes or leave them the same. Studying your resource image and fill each box with one invented linear texture that matches the value of the reproduction at that point. Don’t match or simulate the actual surface texture of the object, but create a line pattern that represents only the value. Use pen and ink directly on the drawing. The boxes tend to simplify the object because there is a loss of detail. Draw new textures within each grid as you proceed. You do want the volume of the object to appear through value. You must also deal with the negative areas–any areas left totally white must be planned as part of the composition. You should end up with an image of the object that has volume and looks somewhat representational from a distance, but as you come closer, you should see that each of the object’s boxes has a different texture. When you’re finished, erase all visible pencil marks.
(Figs. 3.5A, 3.5B, 3.5C, 3.5D)
Submitted by Debra Babylon, Instructor of Art, Bowling Green
