Archive for the ‘Artist Tips’ Category

Official Street Painting (Chalk Drawing) in Florence, Italy

Thursday, December 18th, 2008

Street painting is an experience I recommend to anyone and everyone.

It is good exercise, most certainly gives you good practice at taking criticism.

It is also a great opportunity to work quickly, at a large scale and under pressure, because you have to wash and scub it all away before midnight (or you turn into a pumpkin… only kidding).

Dirty hands after street painting

After spending several hours on your hands and knees in the street, on top of a large chalk drawing, it is likely that you may become a little dirty.

Below you can see the first of my street paintings on the road. I was of course doing it all legally, with an official “Madonnari” license in the centre of Florence on via Calimala, just off Della Republica.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Art News and Views, Artist Tips, Different Strokes | No Comments »

Basic and Essential Drawing Tools and Materials

Sunday, August 10th, 2008

If you want to start drawing, and haven’t done it before, you’ll probably need to get a handful of inexpensive drawing tools before you begin!

First of all, you’ll need a pencil. If you can, I suggest you buy a mechanical graphite pencil with interchangeable leads. You’ll need HB and 2B Graphite leads.

If you can’t get hold of a mechanical pencil with interchangeable leads, you’ll need a small craft knife or Xacto knife for the first stage in sharpening your wooden pencils.

The fundamental drawing tools you'll need to learn to draw academically

The fundamental drawing tools you’ll need to learn to draw academically, minus the drawing board.

You’ll also want a small, usually wooden sandpaper pad for sharpening your pencil, and a grey kneadable eraser (putty rubber).

Also, get a Drawing board (about 50cm/18-20 inches on the longest side). This is small enough for you to rest it on your knees and lean it against your desk, but also large enough to use for medium-sized life drawing on an easel.

Posted in Artist Tips, Figure and Life Drawing, Portraits | No Comments »

Make Your Pencils into Professional Artist’s Equipment.

Friday, August 8th, 2008

How to Make Your Pencils into Professional Artists’ Tools.

This is an essential and fundamental drawing tutorial which shows you explicitly how to sharpen your pencils for use at a professional artist’s level.

First I will start with the technique for traditional wooden (graphite) pencils. After this I will also show you the method for sharpening mechanical pencils.

Many people opt for typical wooden pencils over mechanical pencils because this is what they have become accustomed to using.

Sharpened wooden pencil

A traditional wooden graphite pencil sharpened to a professional artists standard.

Posted in Artist Tips | 1 Comment »

Loose Figure Sketching – Five Minute Poses

Friday, August 8th, 2008

Life drawing can be very technical, with all the measuring, checking and super-smooth shading techniques. One break-away exercise from this is very short life poses. I’ve put a few recent 5-minute sketches into this post.

Five minute partial life pose 01

Half a figure is really enough to cope with for these short poses, essentially capturing the gesture of the pose and if there’s time, some spontaneous construction and articulation. If i’m lucky with how the speed sketch has gone, I have time for some basic tone.

Five minute partial life pose 02

Of course it is possible to grab a quick snapshot of the entire pose, but this is more difficult and can just become a useless scribble.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Artist Tips, Figure and Life Drawing | No Comments »

Improve Your Drawing Skills With Daily Shape Exercises

Friday, August 8th, 2008

This quick and easy drawing tutorial will show you how to set up a 10 – 20 minute daily drawing exercise routine called Shape Exercises.

If you can only manage a couple of days a week, it will still benefit you.

Shape exercises are really simple and effective drawing exercises that help you train your eyes to draw the abstract shapes that make up what you see in real life.

(Obviously), this is especially useful for life or figure drawing, still life and quick outdoor sketching.

Five abstract shapes drawn from various shape exercises

A sample of completed Shape Exercises. Copying abstract shapes by eye can make a real difference to your life drawing.

Tags: ,
Posted in Artist Tips | No Comments »

From Line Drawing to Light and Shade (Chiaroscuro)

Friday, August 8th, 2008

As you have no doubt seen with hieroglyphics, early Egyptian wall paintings were outlines that had tinted colourings, and the earliest known wall sculpture was an incised outline.

After these outlines had been used to convey form for centuries, people gradually began to carve out the surface of the wall between these outlines, modelling in low relief.

Chiaroscuro Study of a Young Woman Facing Away, by Antoine Watteau, from an original drawing in the collection of Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon.

Chiaroscuro Study of a Young Woman Facing Away, by Antoine Watteau, from an original drawing in the collection of Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon.

Maybe it was this that suggested to the artist painting their outline to shade between the outlines. This subtle suggestion of form, using an outline that was lightly shaded was the only technique used up until Leonardo, who was the first genius to seriously perceive light and shade.

Tags: ,
Posted in Artist Philosophies, Artist Tips | No Comments »