Technique of the Week « Exploring the Art of Nature

Mosaic Patterns

Welcome to the Weekly Art Action for the week of June 14th!

These art actions are designed to give you something specific to do, related to drawing or nature journalling, to help you build and practice your skills, or maybe learn a new skill along the way.

This week’s art action assignment is to make a random mosaic-like pattern with markers or pencils. A mosaic is when someone takes little tiles and arranges them to make either a picture or a pattern (like a tiled floor). In this case, we’re just drawing a pattern out.

Supplies

paper

markers or pencils or crayons (etc.)

Optional: different kinds of stencils, rulers, or shapes to trace, if you don’t want to draw “freehand”

How do I do it?

The main goal today is really about playing with color and using graphical patterns to make an interesting looking mosaic-like picture. This is a really fun project to do.

There are a couple of different ways to do this.

The first way is to draw in the black lines first. Just start out with a black marker or pencil, and make random (or deliberate) lines all over your paper, crossing over other lines, so that you have lots of small sections all over your paper to color in. Next, select out some colors, and color in your areas.

Be Creative by Esther Eddy (age 10)

Express Yourself by Isobel Eddy (age 10)

The other possibility, which my kids showed me, is to start with your colors, and just draw patterns with your colors all over the paper, as you see above.

Going Forward

This can be a great way to play around with color, and find out what colors work well together and which do not. Try to use this idea to make interesting posters, or designs to hang up.

If you’ve done this lesson, and you’d like to share your results, just post a link to your photo in the comments section. (This is family friendly, so please keep it PG, or it will be deleted! Thanks!) If you don’t have a website or blog of your own, you could upload it to a site like Flickr.com and share with us that way.

Tags: color, mosiac
Posted in Learning to Sketch, Sketching Techniques, Technique of the Week | Comments (2)

Advanced Gradients

Welcome to the Weekly Art Action for the week of June 21st!

These art actions are designed to give you something specific to do, related to drawing or nature journalling, to help you build and practice your skills, or maybe learn a new skill along the way.

This week’s art action is about practicing making gradients that have good contrast. This past weekend, I was blessed to be the judge at an art contest at the first Beets, Beats, and Eats of the new year in Ortonville Michigan. This got me thinking quite a bit about what makes art good or bad, and how we judge art. Are there objective ways of looking at, and evaluating art? These questions stirred in my mind in the days leading up to my role as an art judge.

After looking at the different, beautiful works of art, and thinking on this over the last few days following the show, I realized that one of the biggest areas that set apart the good from the flat-out awesome was contrast. Talking with one of the other judges, she agreed with me that the pictures that really made the cut had excellent contrast in them, from 5-8 year old group, all the way up to the adult group.

What is contrast? Contrast is basically the difference between teh light and the dark areas of your picture. A picture with good contrast has some very black dark areas (even if it’s only a thin line) and some very white light areas, even if only in a small highlight. Take some time yourself to flip through a book on art, and you’ll see what I mean.

This art action is going to take you through an exercise in making a shading that goes from very black to white as smoothly as possible.

Supplies

Any kind of paper will work, like a sketchbook or notepad.

a ruler (optional)

Some graphite pencils of different hardnesses. You should have one pencil that is very soft (such as a 6B pencil) and one that is harder (such as a 2H).

A blending stump, or, if you don’t have one, a cotton swab will work but not as well.

How to make a simple gradient

Begin by making a long, thin rectangle on your page.

Start at one end for the darkest possible shade in the gradient, and move towards the other end for the lightest shade, using a medium soft pencil (such as 2B). Work in even strokes, preferably up and down or diagonally, filling in the area except for the very end of the light range.

Go back over and slowly add layers towards the darker end of the gradient, one at a time. If you go outside the lines, you can always erase it.

Using the softest pencil, add a very dark area at the end.

Using a blending stump, blend in your gradient using short, even strokes.

If necessary, use an eraser to add highlights to the lighter end of your gradient.

The Goal

The main goal for this exercise is to help you practice making gradients for the next time you do any kind of a shaded drawing. Work on getting some rich black areas in every drawing, and some very white highlights, as this helps you to have a more visually interesting drawing, and it helps your drawing to look more finished.

Going Forward

This technique can be done using graphite pencil as we’ve done here, but you can use this really in any media — creating water color gradients, colored pencil gradients, chalk gradients, etc. Select one color, and bring it from black, to white, starting with black, moving towards your chosen color shaded with black, to very light tints of your chosen color. This is an excellent warm up exercise which helps remind you to ad the right amount of contrast to your pictures!

Tags: gradient, shading
Posted in Learning to Sketch, Sketching Techniques, Technique of the Week | Comments (0)

Watercolor Sunset

Welcome to the Weekly Art Action for the week of June 14th!

These art actions are designed to give you something specific to do, related to drawing or nature journalling, to help you build and practice your skills, or maybe learn a new skill along the way.

This week’s art action assignment is to carefully look at a sunset, and create a painting with those colors using washes. Watercolors on watercolor paper (or other heavy paper) work best for this.

Supplies

Water color paper (or some other kind of heavier paper, so that it won’t fall apart when waterlogged)

Water

Watercolors & brushes

and…a sunset to look at!

How do I do it?

The main goal today is not so much “drawing something” but rather capturing the color of something. Sunsets tend to have a huge selection of colors and blends of colors going on. Spend some time really looking at a sunset, enjoying the beauty and the colors. Once indoors, select a color pallette. Talk about what colors we saw in the sunset and how they blended together. Most of the time there is blue for the sky, combined with reds and oranges with the sunset, leading to different shades of red, orange, pink, purple, etc. You’ll want either dark green, brown, or black for your ground, if you want to include it.

On your paper, you’ll also want to add some kind of horizon line. The horizon is where the sky meets the ground. Because our main focus is going to be the sunset, my horizon line is going to be close to the ground. You don’t have to draw any ground at all though; just paint the sky.

Here are the steps for making a watercolor sunset.

1. Wet down the paper with a large brush and plain water. You may want to tape down the paper first with masking tape to prevent it from curling up too much. If you are drawing the ground too, keep the area below the horizon line dry to prevent the paint from running into that area.

2. Create a Gradient Wash of Blue for the bulk of the sky. When your paper is already wet, the color will spread really nicely, and gently, across the paper. to make a nicer looking sky, I usually start off darker at the top of my paper, and let it slowly fade towards the horizon line.

3. While the blue is still damp, you can add dabs of the other colors (such as reds and oranges). This will create what is called a Variegated Wash. Because the paper is so wet, the colors will blend more easily.

4. For best results, wait until your sunset is dried before adding detail to the area below your horizon line. This will prevent the area below the horizon from bleeding into the sky too much. Another alternative is to use a black waterproof marker to add sillouttes of objects below the horizon line (such as the tree line).

Going Forward

Watercolor washes are very handy to use in different projects. They are well suited to pretty much anything that doesn’t require great detail (or you can use them as a background before adding more detail later). Try to use varigated washes to see how different colors blend together, and practice drawing Gradient washes for skies and fields.

Tags: sunset, watercolor, wet on wet
Posted in Learning to Sketch, Sketching Techniques, Technique of the Week | Comments (0)

Gesture Drawing: Birds

Welcome to the Weekly Art Action for the week of May 24th!

These art actions are designed to give you something specific to do, related to drawing or nature journalling, to help you build and practice your skills, or maybe learn a new skill along the way.

This week’s art action assignment is to do some gesture drawings of birds you see. These can be birds flying, or birds on an electrical wire, or at the feeder. You can use whatever media you want to use to do this. Birds have a fairly simple shape, and don’t sit still too long, so they are great for practicing our gesture sketching techniques.

Supplies

Any kind of paper will work, like a sketchbook or notepad.

A pencil, or some kind crayon or some kind of woodless pencil, such as what I used: Prismacolor Art Stix . The idea is to draw loosely and to draw large, and a pencil may make it too tempting to draw tightly and to erase.

How do I do it?

Follow the instructions in the gesture drawing lesson I did several months ago here.

Try to draw as quickly as you can, getting as much of the shape, basic shading, and other basic information down on paper as quickly as possible. The idea behind a gesture drawing is so that you can go back and use it to make a more complete drawing later. You are only getting as much down as quickly as possible before the subject flies away! Gesture drawings are important when sketching in nature because nature often doesn’t sit still for long.

Keep it loose, work fast, and have fun!

Going Forward

This is a fun activity to do any time. For example, a few weeks ago, I had to wait in the parking lot for someone, and saw tons of sea gulls flying around overhead. All I had with me was one prismacolor black art stix, because I had used it in the first grade art class I taught earlier that day (I like how dark and bold the lines are, when teaching first graders how to draw simple contours). I sketched these black colored sea gulls as they sat on the lines overhead and flew around, hoping someone would throw them some food, no doubt.

A page of sketches I did in my car of birds in a parking lot, mostly sea gulls

A detail of sea gulls flying overhead, in prismacolor art stix (black)

A detail of the smaller birds (nuthatches, I believe) on the wire overhead

Tags: birds, gesture drawing
Posted in Learning to Sketch, Nature Study, Sketching Techniques, Technique of the Week | Comments (0)

Observational Drawing: Salt and Pepper Shakers

Welcome to the Weekly Art Action for the week of May 10th!

These art actions are designed to give you something specific to do, related to drawing or nature journalling, to help you build and practice your skills, or maybe learn a new skill along the way.

This week’s art action assignment is to sketch your salt and pepper shakers. You can use whatever media you want to use to do this. The main thing to focus on is to really look at your salt and pepper shakers, and draw them from observation. Salt and pepper shakers are usually simple shapes, and as such, they are good for practicing our skills on something most of us has laying around, without it being too complex.

Supplies

Any kind of paper will work, like a sketchbook or notepad.

A 4H (or other “H” graphite pencil) to lightly sketch the picture.

Any other kind of pencils such as colored pencils or regular HB (#2) pencils, and an eraser. You may also need a drawing stump in order to blend in your shading with a regular pencil.

How do I do it?

Start off by really looking at your salt and pepper shakers. Take some time to let your eye go along the shape of the object. Try to see if you can pick out the different shapes use in a salt and pepper shaker. Plan how you will draw them. Also, take some time to think about your background. Are you going to color it or shade it or leave it blank?

Next, very lightly start sketching your salt and pepper shakers on the paper.

Shade them as needed

…and keep working on them until you have them just as you want them to look.

For variety, try to sketch them using the different techniques we’ve learned here, such as Grissaille, making a Blind Contour Drawing, creating a Gesture Drawing, or a regular Contour Drawing.

The Goal

The main goal for this exercise is to practice your sketching techniques using a very simple set of objects you’ll find around your house.

Going Forward

For variety, try to sketch them using the different techniques we’ve learned here, such as Grissaille, making a Blind Contour Drawing, creating a Gesture Drawing, or a regular Contour Drawing.

Tags: observational drawing, still life
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Grisaille with Colored Pencils

Welcome to the Weekly Art Action for the week of May 3rd!

These art actions are designed to give you something specific to do, related to drawing or nature journalling, to help you build and practice your skills, or maybe learn a new skill along the way.

This week’s art action is all about a colored pencil technique known as “grisaille”. You can actually use grisaille (gris = gray in French) with pretty much any medium (paints, pencils, chalks, etc.), though I find it works especially well with pencil. I frequently get emails from readers who ask me to explain how to draw with colored pencils in a nutshell. Well, I am not sure that you really can “nutshell” colored pencils, but grisaille comes close. It should give you a good foundation. My newest drawing DVD, Super Simple Nature Sketching for Early Spring demonstrates this technique over and over again, in 6 different pictures.

Sometimes grisaille refers to a monochrome (black and white) picture, but it can also refer to starting with a black and white shaded drawing, and adding color over the top of it, as we will be doing here.

Supplies

Any kind of paper will work, like a sketchbook or notepad.

A 4H (or other “H” graphite pencil) to lightly sketch the picture.

A set of colored pencils, preferably some with a softer lead (such as Prismacolor Premier), including at least one black colored pencil, and, if possible, a couple of shades of gray. Prismacolor pencils can be purchased individually at most art supply stores, so if you have a set of other colored pencils that doesn’t include gray, you may find some individual grays at the store.

How do you work with grisaille with colored pencils?

Start with a simple contour sketch of something, such as a ball, a coffee mug, or something else simple to practice on.

Look carefully at the object you’ve sketched. Where are the shadows?

Using the black (and the different levels of gray, if you have some), add the shading. If you are using gray scale pencils, start with the lightest gray, and go to the darkest. If you are just using black, draw lightly for the lighter shades and use cross hatching, or darker shading to add your darker shades.

After you have gotten a very good looking black and white drawing, with your shading looking good, go over the top of the drawing with your colored pencils.

Always draw your lines/shading with the flow of your subject.

The Goal

The main goal for drawing with a grisaille technique is to create a black and white shaded picture that looks nearly complete before you move on to adding color, so that the shading blends in as you add your color.

Going Forward

When quickly sketching something in a nature journal, you may not be able to complete a “perfect” monochrome grisaille under drawing first, but sketching and shading in black or gray before adding color will still help your colored pencil drawings to look better.

I don’t recommend sketching with just the black colored pencil though, as it doesn’t erase as easily as a graphite pencil.

Tags: gradient, Grisaille, shading
Posted in Learning to Sketch, Sketching Techniques, Technique of the Week | Comments (0)

Using Guidelines, Part 2

Welcome to the Weekly Art Action for the week of April 19th!

(this is part two of last weeks edition, and covers much of the same material, only focusing on squarish shapes, instead of oval guidelines)

These art actions are designed to give you something specific to do, related to drawing or nature journalling, to help you build and practice your skills, or maybe learn a new skill along the way.

This week’s art action involves creating polygon (multi-sided) guidelines to help you when drawing. This is a variation on doing gesture drawings, which we talked about earlier. When you are drawing something, look at it carefully, and try to notice the basic shapes involved. For example, when you are drawing a house or building, you would usually start off with some kind of a pentagon (five sided) shape, or a rectangular (4 sided) shape, depending on the building. Start off “boxing in” the basic shape, to get the proportions correct, and add more detail later.

Supplies

Any kind of paper will work, like a sketchbook or notepad.

Because we will be erasing the guidelines after we are done drawing them, we’ll need to draw them as lightly as possible. If you have drawing pencils available, pick one with an H in the number (2H, 3H, 4H, 5H, 6H). The “H” pencils have a harder lead, and therefore make a lighter mark. Use a darker pencil (a regular #2 pencil, or HB drawing pencil) for the lines you are going to keep.

How do you work with guide lines?

Many times when you are drawing an object, you need to get as much information down as quickly as possible before you start to add in the finer details. This can be done either by using gesture drawing, or by breaking down the basic shapes of the object you are drawing into simple geometic shapes, which allow you fill in the details later. This enables you get much information down on paper, so that the proportions of what you are drawing will be correct, as you fill in the details.

Below are some examples:

Note that my examples are a little darker than normal, simply so you can see them on the photograph!

The Goal

The main goal for drawing with guidelines is to get the basic shapes down on paper of the objects you are drawing, so that you have your drawing laid out simply. If you were to just work on different areas of a sketch, drawing or painting until completion, before moving onto other parts of a drawing, you’d likely have a drawing with proportions that are inaccurate. The guidelines help you to be more accurate when drawing objects.

Going Forward

As you look around at possible drawing subjects for sketching, before you ever start to draw, try to pick out all of the different shapes you see in the object. In your mind, as you observe your subject, break down the scene into the most basic geometric shapes. This will help you have a better starting point for your drawings and sketches!

Tags: guidelines
Posted in Learning to Sketch, Technique of the Week | Comments (0)

Using Circular Guidelines

Welcome to the Weekly Art Action for the week of April 12th!

Sorry for that longer-than-intended furlough!

These art actions are designed to give you something specific to do, related to drawing or nature journalling, to help you build and practice your skills, or maybe learn a new skill along the way.

This week’s art action involves creating circular guidelines to help you when drawing. This is a variation on doing gesture drawings, which we talked about earlier. When you are drawing something, look at it carefully, and try to notice the basic shapes involved. For example, when you are drawing a candle, there are usually two ovals (top and bottom) connected by parallel lines for the sides. When you are drawing many kinds of flowers, there is usually some kind of circle or oval shape. Pick something simple to sketch (for example, a can, a coffee mug, etc.), and start off by lightly sketching out the oval or circular shapes as guidelines, very lightly, so that you can erase them later when you are done sketching.

Supplies

Any kind of paper will work, like a sketchbook or notepad.

How do you work with guide lines?

Many times when you are drawing an object, you need to get as much information down as quickly as possible before you start to add in the finer details. This can be done either by using gesture drawing, or by breaking down the basic shapes of the object you are drawing into simple geometric shapes, which allow you fill in the details later. This enables you get much information down on paper, so that the proportions of what you are drawing will be correct, as you fill in the details.

Below are some examples:

Note that my examples are a little darker than normal, simply so you can see them on the photograph!

The Mug on the top has 3 ovals (one for the top, one for the bottom, and one for the handle). The flower has two ovals. The outer oval helps us to proportion our flower petals around the inner oval. The can has two ovals. Even when we are drawing cartoon faces, we use ovals and curved lines to lay out the basic shape of the face, and to position the facial features.

The Goal

Going Forward

A great way to use gesture drawing is to bring along a sketchbook and pencil the next time you go to the zoo, or to the park. Try to make a gesture drawing of the different animals you see.

Use gesture drawing as a regular warm-up when drawing and sketching.

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Sketching Signs of Life

Welcome to the Weekly Art Action for the week of March 22nd!

These art actions are designed to give you something specific to do, related to drawing or nature journalling, to help you build and practice your skills, or maybe learn a new skill along the way.

This week’s art action involves sketching some sprouting plants you might find in your home or yard.

Drawing plants and flowers can be pretty intimidating, but they do start of small, as little bits of green poking up from the ground! Using a contour, draw the basic shape of your sprouting plant life, and then shade or color it in, using whatever you have.

Supplies

paper, pencil, and (if you want) colored pencils or chalks.

How do I do it?

This time of year, nature is starting to wake up from it’s winter slumber. If you have bulbs planted in the yard, these are usually among the first to “wake up”, especially crocuses or tulips. I have hyacinths being “forced” on my window sill, which I’ve drawn.

If it’s too cold outside, bring a camera instead of a sketchbook, and snap a photo of your subject.

Forced Hyacinth Bulbs

Forced Hyacinth bulbs in a Terra cotta pot, drawn with pen, ink, and conte crayon

The Goal

The goal here is to practice what you’ve learned about contours on a “real live subject”.

Going Forward

Take note of the plant whose sprouts you just sketched. Try to take a photo or make a sketch every week, as it grows.

Tags: bulbs, flowers
Posted in From My Sketchbook, Learning to Sketch, Lessons, Technique of the Week | Comments (0)

Creating Gradients

Welcome to the Weekly Art Action for the week of March 15th!

These art actions are designed to give you something specific to do, related to drawing or nature journalling, to help you build and practice your skills, or maybe learn a new skill along the way.

This week’s art action is to do work on creating a nice, smooth gradient with pencil.

Supplies

For this exercise, grab a piece of paper, or a sketchbook of any size, a ruler (or something to use as a straight edge), and different kinds of drawing pencils (recommend: a couple of pencils with “B”, a couple with “H” and one regular #2 (HB) pencil.), and a drawing stump or tortillian (these usually come with most graphite drawing pencil sets, or are available from most art stores. In a pinch, a handfull of cotton swabs will work, but not as well).

How are we creating a gradient?

When shades move smoothly from light to dark, or from dark to light, we call this a gradient. Gradients are used to smoothly shade objects that we draw, to help them look more realistic. The different kinds of shading help something drawn on a two dimensional piece of paper appear to be three dimensional.

To start off, take your ruler, and draw a long box, about an inch high, and however long your paper is. You should probably use one of the H pencils, as those have harder leads, and will not smear.

Starting on one end of your box, slowly work at shading in the box, moving from dark to light. Try to get as dark as possible with the “dark” end, and smoothly transition to perfectly white on the other end. You will likely need to try this a few times, as you get the feel for how your pencils work. The B pencils have softer leads, and so will create darker shades (and smear more). The H pencils have harder leads and will not smear as much.

Gradient Sample

Use the drawing stump (or tortillian, or cotton swabs if you’re using those) to blend the pencil in smoothly.

Draw several gradients this way, some with a mix of pencils, and others with just one kind of pencil (for example, using only a 4B pencil or only an HB pencil), to get a feel for what you can do with different kinds of pencils.

Tips to watch out for:

try to keep your pencil sketching going in the same direction. For example, if you are drawing horizontally, don’t switch directions, and suddenly start sketching in a different direction. When you are shading any object, you should try to move your pencil with the contour of the object. In this case, shading a rectangle, we can choose what direction we move the pencil, but whatever direction you move it, make sure you remain consistent.
When blending with the stump, always use even strokes in the direction of the object’s contour.
Keep in mind that the drawing stump with “pick up” some of the pencil lead, and therefore it may shade your white areas. As you get closer to the white areas, you may want to flip the stump over and use a cleaner side.
Practice, practice, practice.

The Goal

Have you ever drawn something, especially one of your very first drawings, and though the shapes of everything were spot on, something just seemed not quite right? Most of the time, the problem is with the gradients used in shading, and most of the time the specific problem with the gradient is that the dark areas don’t get dark enough. This results in a somewhat “washed out” look in a picture, because it lacks contrast. By practicing gradients in this way, we can practice getting super dark, all the way to super light, without the added “distraction” of actually drawing something “real”.

The goal is to create a gradient that goes from very dark to very light, as smoothly as possible. It should almost look like a smooth surface.

Going Forward

After you’ve done this a few times, try to create a gradient on different kinds of paper, and notice the difference. Some paper has more “tooth” than other kinds of paper, which means it grabs and holds onto the pencil lead better. Smoother paper tends to smear more, because it has less “tooth”. Rougher paper can get darker, but the gradient won’t look as smooth.

Try to make a gradient with just one kind of pencil (for example, a #2 [HB] pencil), and see if you can get a smooth gradient that way. Get a feel for how different pencils behave when creating gradients.

Tags: blending, gradient, shading
Posted in Technique of the Week | Comments (0)

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How to make a simple gradient

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How do you work with grisaille with colored pencils?

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How do you work with guide lines?

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