This may sound funny but I’ve been using it for the last couple of months and it really works.
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Hack
I’ve finally finished my drawing of my chair without the pillows and as you can see I’m not very satisfied with the result.
It is a difficult drawing. Especially the curved lines that must be drawn at an angle.
I’m not sure what I should expect from myself with this kinds of drawings. But I keep seeing a lot of details that aren’t drawn the way they should.
Probable it just means that I’ll have to revisit this drawing at some point.
Naked chair
(For those who can’t read the comments (starting at the top and going clock wise): wrong angle, to thick, wrong shape, wrong angle, wrong angle, should be further forward, lost my patience)
I almost forgot.
This is more or less the negative space drawing assignment for the right side of the brain book. Of course the drawing for the book should only have an out line were as I tried to draw the details on the in site of the chair.
One trick that the book teaches and that I found to be something of a mix blessing is how to judge what the proportions of the different parts of the chair.
You just pick a line on your subject that is of a middle length. That line is called “one unit”. Then you compare every other line in you subject to that unit.
To translate it to your drawing you pick a unit that is nicely proportionated to the size of your paper to measure your subject.
The nice thing about this method is that it’s very easy figure out how to get the interesting parts of your subject on the paper without it being to small or to large.
I found that the down side is that it’s very hard to judge the length of lines that are much shorter then your unit. Is a line 1/5 or 1/6 of the length of the unit?
For this kind of drawing it does matter.
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Using my new blending technique.
You can use a tortillon to mix colors over a large surface. But what do you do when you only want to mix a line of colors. Then you use a white blending pencil.
White lines
The only problem I have at the moment is that I can’t predict what color the blended line will have. Using yellow and blue the line should have been green. But for some reason it isn’t.
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Stumbling into a new technique.
I wanted to experiment with a few blue colors just as I did for green in a study a few days ago. Finding a few colors I could use in clouds or in a sea drawing.
When mixing colors I always like to mix in some white. Even though I wasn’t clear on the effect it would have.
In the study a few days ago I used thick layers of pigment and although the white gave the color a softer feel it didn’t make that much difference.
This time I mix thin layers of pigment. Blending them with a white pencil had an astounding effect. The blending pencil pulled the color out of the paper.
Blue patches
Especialy with the four lower patches you can see the result of blending with a white pencil.You can, of course, get the same effect if you use a tortillon but a blending pencil has a sharp point that can create interesting effects. In my next drawing I will show you what I mean.
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What is it for
A tortillon is a conical piece of pressed paper pulp. It is used to blend colors when you are drawing with graphite pencils or color pencils.
When you use a tortillon to blend a color, pigment is transferred from the paper to the tortillon. Which means that the next time you try to use that tortillon you can’t use it for a different color. If you would it would ruin your drawing.
For that reason I’ve been using pieces of toilet paper to blend colors. You can trough them out when your done.
Mixing colors
But when you mix colors you have to apply much more pressure while blending. That means that you really do need tortillons. So I’ve done a little bit of experimenting and I found that it is in fact very easy to clean a tortillon if you rub it over a sheet of middle grain sanding paper.
The tortillon gets a little shorter and the pigment is left behind on the sanding paper.
Mixing colors 5C
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Mixing color 5D
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Ford Smith is a contemporary artist who paints very beautiful colorful landscapes
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Series
This is the last part of a four part series to find an easy technique to draw a dark color around light colored details. The series consist of:
- An easy artsy way of drawing fireworks
- An easy and dirty way of drawing fireworks
- A quick and dirty way of drawing fireworks
- The easy and greasy way of drawing stars
Finishing touches
After doing A quick and dirty way of drawing fireworks I wasn’t satisfied with the color of the night sky. It was far to light for my taste.
The point of that drawing was to find if it would be possible to get a dark sky without putting very much “work” into the drawing.
Clearly it wasn’t.
With this drawing I put in all the work that was necessary into getting as dark blue as I could get.
Pressure
Just like with the last drawing I started out with drawing the stars. After that I painted the paper with hair styling wax. Than I colored the whole sheet blue. All over the stars.
I used quite a lot of pressure on the blue pencil and drew three layers. I used three hues of blue to get the best and darkest result possible.
The yellow and orange stars where just visible through the blue pencil and I used a tee spoon to scrape the blue off. As usually I finished my drawing with a hair spray to fixate it.
Stars
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Conclussion
What have I learned from my experiments?
- It’s quite easy to draw fireworks and stars against a dark sky.
- It’s possible to draw on top of colors that are fixated with hair spray .
- Although it is possible to blend colors using the brush I used to paint wax on the sheet of paper, the whole sheet gets the same color. A flowing color like I got in Mask doesn’t seem to be possible.
- When mixing pencil with hair styling wax you should be very careful where you put your hands otherwise everything will get blue
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Let’s clear the stage for a fellow autist. Gilles Trehin draws pictures of the imaginary town of Urville.
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The last few weeks I’ve been doing a lot of abstract drawings. Which is fun but it’s only a small part of the pictures I see in my mind. Most pictures are about people, animals and objects. I can only draw a small portion of these pictures because I don’t have the skills.
This morning I decided it was time to move on. I went down town to get some flowers to draw. Only to find that the first flower shop gets stocked in the afternoon and the second flower shop is gone. Driving to where the other flower shop used to be I found a shop with Indian artifacts.
This shop had several nice pots. One of which reminded me of a church window.
Church window
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I don’t think a tree has any religious meaning but since I’m not jet very good in drawing people this seemed a saver choice.
Although the drawing turned out quite nice I wish I had taking a little less “save” shape to put on the window. The drawing process turned out to be a little boring.
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Amy Bennet constructed a town using model railroad miniatures, landscaping supplies and dollhouse lighting. From this model she paints pictures of the inside and outside of the houses and the people that could have lived in this town.
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At long last we now can watch Discovery channel in Gouda. For years the local cable company held on to the principle that as long as there was one old lady who didn’t want to watch anything but the Dutch channels, cable should be as cheap as possible. So we had the Dutch channels and several home shopping channels but nothing that could raise either the fee or your interest.
One of my favorite shows on Discovery channel is the one about the Orange County Choppers shop. I like to see how those people make the most complicated and beautiful bikes.
In one of there shows they made a tribute chopper for David Mann (Wikipedia). For that bike they had an artist do a rendering of flames on the frame.
I thought doing a drawing of flames would be a nice opportunity do have another go with the pencil on pencil blending method.
Flames
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In real life it’s quite a nice drawing but sadly the scanner isn’t able to pick up all the colors. The flamy part is actually three colors. Flowing from dark purple in the middle to orange/yellow at the edge.
I’ll have to come back on this drawing.
Drawing hack
In kindergarten we’ve all learned that it is something of a deadly sin to color outside of the lines. But when you adhere to that rule you might get something like the orange in my drawing Apples and pears. Not very real, is it.
If you look closely at “Flames” you could see that there are a few green patches on the edge between yellow and blue.
If your hands are steady enough to color right up to the line, by all means do. But when you’re presented with the option to either color outside of the lines or or leave some white. Draw outside of the lines. Nobody will see the mixture of colors when you do, but leave a bit of white and it will stick out like a sore thumb
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On Wagonized you’ll find drawings by France Belleville. His drawings, both with pencil and with pen, are about people, ladies (cars 
), dogs and every day items.
Today I have a second link for you. After writing about Wagonized I remembered that I had planned to give you this link to David Mann’s art.
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Tip of my tongue
Have you ever had that you know what you wanted to say but you just couldn’t remember the words.
In Dutch we talk about having something at the tip of ones tongue.
I have a lot this type of experience. Not with words but with pictures.
Sometimes when I try to remember someone, his face is gone. I know he has a face but I can’t remember it.
For years I was afraid that would mean that I wouldn’t recognize him the next time I’d meet him. Although I always did it still it frightened me.
Especially the fact that it almost always were people I liked a lot, whose face I couldn’t remember had me scared. (Although it’s quite possible that I also would have had this problem with people I didn’t like. Maybe I never noticed it because I don’t think as much about people I don’t like.)
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When I try to draw a portrait from memory I run into the same problem. I can remember one detail of the face and when I try to concentrate on the rest of the face, everything disappears. The harder I try, the less I remember.
While the face is disappearing from my memory I feel that if I would see a picture or a drawing of him I would recognize him.
Next drawing
After trying my hand at a drawing of a fire I thought I go on with playing with color and shape and draw another rockface.
Cliffside 1st sketch
Building a drawing
After I drew this part I found something strange.
I have no idea what is to the left of this point.
I do know what is to the right of this point but I can’t see it in my mind. I can almost feel it. I have the same feeling as when I have something on the tip of my tongue.
Not knowing what’s to the left of this point isn’t really a problem. It just calls for a re-framing of the drawing. Just like you would with a photograph.
I just didn’t think it possible to get in the same situation when your drawing from memory.
As I told you before I have a kind of syntheses between seeing and feeling. While I’m looking at something I can chose to “touch” it with a kind of imagionary hand. When I do I have a strange all be very exciting feeling.
Not being able to see what is to the right of this point I used my imaginary hand to feel it and got very, very excited.
The problem with getting very excited is that I can’t sit still. I have to move. Go out and cycle for a bit or just bounce through my room. Which means that this drawing is turning out to be much more difficult than I had expected.
A second problem is that I have to decide on colors while I’m trying to feel my way round this rock formation. It wasn’t long before I realized that I had made a mistake. In the middle of the drawing is a red-brown patch. Just below there’s a dark brown patch. The dark brown patch should have been much lighter. I tried to save it by making the dark patch reddish but it didn’t work.
To give myself some grip I tried sketching a part with a graphic pencil.
Ravine 2th sketch
Usually if I find a sketch isn’t what I wanted I put it away and start anew. This time I put the sketch in front so I could see part of the landscape. I figured that would subdue the excitement and I would be able to finish the drawing.
But it didn’t work. Or actually it did work but not in the way I expected.
The feeling of excitement left me completely and was replaced with a feeling of complete boredom. I couldn’t concentrate on the drawing and within minutes I caught myself making a mistake.
The next morning while looking at the inside of my eyelids I saw the Cliffside as it should be.
I’m not sure whether I already have the technical skill necessary to draw this picture. I get back to it.
Hack
I’m finding that I have some difficulty in drawing parallel lines. Especially when they are more then a few centimeters apart.
To make this easier turn the sheet of paper till the first line is pointing straight down. When you draw your second line straight down it will be parallel to the first.
You can use almost the same technique to draw two lines at right angle. Just turn the paper till the first line is horizontal. Draw the second line straight down and you’ll have your right angle.
Link
I would never call this Youtube video art but I am sure you never saw anything like this. It sure gives a whole new meaning to the word food coloring (Couldn’t resist ).
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For this drawing I wanted my colors to smoothly flow from yellow to almost red and from light blue to dark blue almost black.
I first tried blending the colors with a piece of toilet paper and got this sketch.
Pillar of community 1st sketch
You can’t see it very well in the scan but there is a light yellow orange haze on top of the pillar. Using a piece of toilet paper works fine when you want to mix a few colors but it didn’t work for this drawing.
The problem is that the paper very quickly gets dirty. I tried first blending the lighter parts and then moving on to the darker parts but I still got toilet paper with to much pigment on it which was transferred to the drawing.
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I did a little research on the Internet and found that there are several blending techniques.
One technique I found myself a few weeks ago. I used it in Blending colors (Art: Sunset 1 sketch). It is possible to use a light colored pencil to blend a darker pigment. A light green or yellow on top of a darker green (or blue) works very nice. While researching I found that this technique is called burnishing. Apparently it works especially nice if you use a colorless blending pencil.
It took me a while before I realized that they meant the white pencil in my pencil box. If you have it, you can also use a blank crayon.
I came across a website where someone talked about using some kind of metal for blending colors. And one website advised using different grains of paper.
I didn’t have any crayons so I had to go to my local art show to buy some. The art shop didn’t have any crayons and advised to go to a toys shop. They did have crayons in lots of colors except blank.
What the art shop did have was something called a “blender”. That’s kind of a brush only where the hairy bit usually goes sits a rubber tip. Apparently it’s specifically made for blending.
For the next test I used medium grain 175 grams paper and soft grain 180 grams paper.
I tried all three techniques at ones.
Starting with the blender which work a little better then toilet paper. Although it did get pigment transferred, you can control it better then with the toilet paper.
Then I tried a metal (spoon). I can’t say that the spoon really did something. I had the feeling that the metal made the drawing a little glassy but I’m not sure.
Pressing hard on the white pencil, starting at the yellow end and working to the darker end did have a very definite result. Not only did it give the drawing a glassy feel but it also gave the colors to flowing feeling I was looking for.
After trying the technique with the yellow orange part I decided that I liked the one on soft grain the best. I don’t know if that had anything to do with the grain or with the way I used the different techniques.
Pillar of community
Hack
When you’re working on more complicate drawings, like this one, you often find that you need to try a color or a new technique. You could take a sheet of drawing paper but usually that would be a waste since you only need a corner.
I’ve solved this by cutting a sheet of (A4) drawing paper in 8 pieces. This way every time I want to try something I can use a little piece of paper.
Being able to experiment is especially useful when you’re doing a drawing with a lot of varying colors like my sketch Cliffside that I will be posting in a few days.
Link
Jason Chan is trying to marry his western art education with his love for eastern art. On his site he has extensive gallery of his work
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