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Since you are now familiar with some basic techniques, let's put your newly acquired knowledge of "wash" to work.
For your first wash drawing, you'll begin by preparing a "working drawing" in pencil. This working drawing will be traced onto illustration board and finally rendered in wash. This is "behind the scenes" work; the public never sees it. The charcoal drawings we did in this series were an end in themselves - ready to be framed and hung; these working drawings are not. their only purpose is to serve as a guide for your finished drawing in wash or any other medium you wish. They record only the silent points you'll want to transfer, leaving the minute details of the finished drawing to be rendered in the particular medium you are working in, in this case, wash. |
Try to follow closely the demonstrations that will follow. If it is possible, go out and pick up a branch that has several leaves and bring it into your house or studio. Set it up in any position you wish and begin your "working drawing." Your drawing doesn't have to be true to the last detail. Just establish the big, overall proportions and a suggestion of the lights and shadows. (ABOUT FIG. A - One of the requisites for sound drawing is the accurate observation of both the positive shapes and negative shapes of objects in a composition. In case you've forgotten, the positive shape is the object itself, and the negative shape is any area left vacant. Since the positive shapes of the branch and its leaves are so obvious, here the negative shapes have been diagrammed and "pulled out" and toned gray so you can see them clearly.)
WORKING DRAWINGS
At present you are concerned with representation of an object. Later, the object - animate or inanimate - will only serve as a point of departure for you. As you let your sensitivity and your reactions take over, you will become more subjective. The more you submerge the cold, calculating eye of correct proportions, the more you'll change, exaggerate, and distort in order to express visually the emotions you want to convey. But remember that stage comes later, after you have mastered the fundamentals. It's only when you know why you throw away or bend certain drawing principles to your own needs that your art will rise above the factual and have the power to impress your spectator. Maple Branch, Step 1: When your working drawing is correct, blacken its back with graphite, then transfer the big shapes and the large details onto a 11" X 14" illustration board.
REALISM FIRST
Maple Branch, Step 2: Prepare four tones of gray. Charge your #5 or #7 brush with the lightest value and bring the wash down from top to bottom of branch and leaf. Make sure white details are left untouched.
Maple Branch, Step 3: When this first wash is dry, begin the modeling. Run the #7 brush with clear water down the center of your branch; it won't disturb the flat wash if the wash is completely dry. Before the water dries, apply the graded washes that give the branch its cylindrical form. For soft edges, work on a damp surface: for hard edges, work on a dry surface.
Maple Branch, Step 4: Work over the whole drawing. While you're waiting for one part to dry, keep working on another until the most minute details are finished.