Drawing from Line to Life

GRAPHITE v CHARCOAL

Mike Sibley — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 16:54:57 +0000

Jason, who has recently joined TheDrawingForum.com, jointly run by myself and JD Hillberry, emailed to ask:

I have been reading both yours and JD Hillberry's books so I don't make too many novice mistakes, and I wondered why you don't appear to have gone down the same road as JD, regarding using charcoal pencils to get the non-reflective, VERY darks that seem impossible with standard soft graphite.

First, JD and I work in completely different ways. JD's work is more planned and controlled, such as using frisket to blank out selected areas. That requires a very accurate initial drawing that probably cannot be readily altered during the drawing process. However, I love working in graphite because it offers that direct mind-to-hand-to-paper connection - you think, you draw. So I begin with a very loose set of guidelines...

Drawing Short Hair

Mike Sibley — Sat, 19 Jan 2013 14:58:04 +0000

Jackie emailed to tell me she was enjoying my book and that she loves to draw wildlife and horses. She asked...

"When drawing the horse that has fine “show coat” hair, would I just use a blending technique or actually try to draw smooth, short hair?"

Definitely not blending! If I'm correctly picturing the type of coat you mean (smooth, glossy, with sharp–edged highlights) the last thing you want to so is soften anything. Personally, I'd build it up using short adjacent marks that allowed me to "sculpt" the form as I progressed through the horse. And I'd be aiming at producing sharp edges...

More INDENTING EXPLAINED

Mike Sibley — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 13:54:13 +0000

John emailed to ask about indenting - a technique that isn't working too well for him. He asked "I tried to draw the cat in the 'Cat Food Advert'. I'm happy with the drawing but my indenting never really worked - the width of the whiskers varied - and I gave up trying to draw the chest area fur".

That was our lovely tortoiseshell cat Clarrie. The chest fur is all negative drawing, which is quite easy once you get used to seeing white shapes on white paper and using the shadows to make them appear.

Indenting, in my experience, has to be applied with as much pressure as your paper will stand - and the pressure has to be consistent, except for the final taper of course. It works best on a smooth surface - my Mellotex takes it like a dream - and (this is important) you must have a hard, smooth surface beneath your paper. My drawing board is both hard and smooth, but if you're using a wooden board or like to work with additional sheets below the one you're working on, it won't work effectively.

INDENTING EXPLAINED

Mike Sibley — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 20:41:44 +0000

Indenting - impressing grooves into your paper that later drawing skips over and leaves as pristine white lines - is an excellent method for creating whiskers, stitches and other accurate parallel-sided lines that suffers none of the faults of an eraser. The INDENTING EXPLAINED tutorial is now online and available.

Applying Soft Graphite Over Hard?

Mike Sibley — Sat, 19 May 2012 17:16:06 +0000

John emailed to ask: "...after reading that it is almost impossible to build up tone from light to dark and that it must be done from dark to light. I believe it has something to do with hard graphite filling in the hollows of the tooth and then preventing softer grades from staying on the paper. Is this understanding somewhere near the mark, or I am totally way off the mark?"

As with all things in Art there are no rules, which means I agree with your understanding and observation but I also know excellent artists who work light to dark. Personally, I belong to the dark to light camp, and here's why...

First, you must understand the properties of graphite and the manufacture of pencils. The crystalline structure of graphite is layers of flat plates. That's why graphite...

A Query on Size and Fading

Mike Sibley — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 13:12:53 +0000

Deidre emailed to ask:

"On your head portraits, why do you prefer not to put a shaded edge around the drawing like you see commonly from other artists?"

It's called a vignette, and I don't like them because it looks unrealistic. This is especially true if you've faded the drawing at the base of the neck - it really needs to just fade out at that point, but a vignette outlines it and ruins the implied continuance of the animal. I think many artists use a vignette because it helps to increase the contrast within the drawing - this is especially true of a white animal - but there are other ways of handling that. I use...

My book and the dangers of working from B&W photos

Mike Sibley — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 20:10:26 +0000

I know many artists who use greyscale in Photoshop and the result can be very helpful in understanding the relative values within an image. But, personally, I think that's as far as that strategy should be taken. Once understood, that knowledge should be used to aid interpretation, but the temptation is to use those relative values as requirements rather than suggestions.

My strategy is to first establish the darkest value in the drawing, so I now have the darkest and lightest (the white of the paper) values exposed, and all intermediate values should automatically fall into place. That puts me in control and not the greyscale image.

How To Draw Trees

Mike Sibley — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 19:21:30 +0000

Artist Stephen Sample, who works in Pen & Ink, emailed me to ask:

"I have been working on trees for the last couple of years, and they turn out pretty nice but, although it looks fairly like a tree, it is not even close to as defined as the trees that you are drawing. In doing the leaves, do you do more of a small random dash, or perhaps is it more of a dot?"

Your trees are missing depth. I'll concentrate on the central one, which is fan-like - a series of radiating ribs with leaves attached. However, there is some depth, as a few of your leaf masses appear in front of some of the branches. Bear in mind that a tree is basically a deformed ball...

Problems with Proportion?

Mike Sibley — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:38:53 +0000

I was recently asked:

I have been drawing portraits for a couple months but am still having a hard time with proportions. I'm finding angled faces hard to draw and I always end up distorting them into looking straight ahead and it looks wrong.

I think "looking straight ahead" might give me a clue to the problem. You haven't yet taught yourself to see what is really there and you are drawing what you think is there. That's a very common problem and one that you have to work at to overcome...

Are my leads GRAPHITE or CARBON?

Mike Sibley — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 14:16:37 +0000

"You present drawings and drawing instruction in graphite. But the tools you use - particularly the Staedtler clutch pencils and leads are actually carbon, at least here in the US they are."
,br> This a Staedtler "problem" I'm often asked about - particularly when an artist has ordered Lumograph "graphite" but received a pack of "carbon" leads. I have in my possession elderly packs of 2mm "graphite" leads and the more recent "carbon" leads...