GRAPHITE TUTORIAL:

 

Elegy (stage five)

 

Here I’ve moved on to the clothing. I'd been contemplating adding a subtle design of some sort to the vest, but I still wasn’t sure at this point. I was afraid it might make the drawing too busy. So I left it for now and moved on. I'd come back to that idea later, when more of the drawing is done.

 

“OK, I understand what you do,” many people have said to me, “but how do you do it?” I’m afraid there is no precise formula. You have to learn to a) imagine it clearly in your head; b) control your hand and your pressure; and c) have lots of patience.

 

A few rules to remember...

 

- Watch your pressure. The harder you press the darker the line, it’s as simple

as that. You can always make your shadows darker as the drawing progresses, but making them too dark early on can spoil your drawing.

 

- Don’t scribble. Take enough time to blend all the different shades of gray.

Don’t take just one shade and use it all over the place, instead apply a few

different shades in subtle layers. If you want your shading to look smooth, you must apply the pencil strokes so close to each other that you can’t tell them apart.

 

- Don’t rush it. Patience is your best friend when it comes to shading. This section of Elegy alone took me somewhere between 8 and 10 hours (I don’t usually time myself, but each of my pencil drawings takes anywhere from 20 to 40 hours to complete, depending on size and level of detail).

 

- Do use some sort of reference material, even if it’s just your own reflection.

I had trouble with the position of the hands in this drawing, so I studied my own hands in the mirror until I got it right. Anything can be used as reference: studying patterns, looking at the twilight sky, watching flowers move in the wind. The human mind can’t exist in a vacuum, and an artist’s eye is not a machine, sometimes it needs guidance.

 

 

 

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