by Henk ter Heide on Thursday May 14, 2009
I tried my hand at drawing an ear. Jack Hamm’s book helped me to get some feel about the general shape an ear should have (img040). Then I search for a photo of an ear and tried to draw that.
I found that I have the tendency to use to dark lines while sketching. The problem with that is that lines have two purposes. Not only do they mark the edge of the subject, the ear in this case. They’re also used to show ridges by representing shades. When you use to dark lines to mark edges it looks like there is a ridge where there should be none.
Yesterday I said that I figured out how shading worked. Today I tried it again.
It’s kind of a trick.
I find that I have two modes of looking at a drawing. In the one mode the drawing is flat and darker and lighter areas are just that. Darker and lighter areas.
In the other mode the drawing becomes 3 dimensional and just by looking at the ridges it becomes obvious where shades will be cast and which areas should be darker and which should be lighter.
The trick is to switch from one mode to the other when your drawing needs it. A few days ago I did that by accident and it felt like an epiphany. I didn’t even know it was possible.
Today I couldn’t get it to work so I had to do it the old fashion way: Work on something else for a few hours and when you return to your drawing you’ve switched.
Then you can see what you actually drew. You can think about what you should do with your next drawing but you can’t actually work on the drawing.
img040
img041
Posted on Flickr by Henk ter Heide
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by Henk ter Heide on Wednesday October 31, 2007
While trying to draw a hand I discover that shade shapes.
The book “Drawing with the right side of the brain” instructs you to draw three drawings before you receive any instruction to create a kind of base line. That’s because people tend to forget how bad they were. At the end of the book you can take these drawings to compare and see your progress.
For the third drawing the assignment was to draw the hand you don’t use for drawing. So for someone who’s right handed that would mean the left hand. But after posting the picture from which I drew yesterday I thought it would be nice to also post the picture from which I draw today. So I’ve made a picture of my right hand holding a pencil and drawn that.
Drawing a hand turns out to be a little more challenging then drawing a portrait.
There’s not much that can go wrong with a portrait. There are a few distinctive feature that should be present. But they have very clear shapes.
But that’s not the case with a hand. If you only draw the shape you end up with something out of a comic book.
But of course I didn’t know that when I started with this drawing. I kept the lessons of the last few days in mind and withstood the temptation to start with some detail.
I started out by drawing the shape of the forefinger and thumb. The rest of the hand and a little piece of the arm. Then I wanted to draw the middle finger and run into a little problem.
You can’t actually see the shape of the middle finger in the middle of the hand. You can see a little piece sticking out. But that’s about it.
It’s gets even more complicated when you try to draw the ring finger. You know it’s there but you can’t see it.
This problem left me no other choice then to try to draw shades.
Starting out with the shade where the ring finger should be. Since that’s about the darkest part. Then came the folds in the forefinger and the lighter parts that show the curve of the finger.
After that I noticed a nice dark shade under the pencil.
The tips of the fingers that stick out under the thumb where very hard to draw until I realized that the shade made them stick out. By leaving a little white you can even see the white of my nails.
All in all, although not perfect this drawing is a lot better then I had expected it to be.
Right hand drawing
The picture from which I drew:
picture of righthand with pencil
After thinking about it for a bit I decided that this drawing should go in my Favorite drawings list.
There is kind of a difference between this drawing and the other in that the others are finished and this one is much more a work in progress. Or to say it an other way. If I had to do it over I would draw the other favorites just the same. In this drawing however there is a lot of room for improvement.
That said. If I compare this drawing to my first drawing I see a lot of progress. Something to be proud about.
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