Drawing Exercise 1

Drawing Line, Tone and Shape.

Drawing Exercise 1

What is drawing? Most simply, drawing is making marks. So let’s do that.

Tape a sheet of white paper to your drawing board.

Use a piece of charcoal to draw some lines.

Make these lines all over the page in any arrangement you like.

Use the point.

Use the side of the charcoal.

Then try a conté crayon and a carbon pencil on different sheets of paper and notice the difference between them.

Try out the different grades of charcoal as well.

What do you notice?

Gradations? Huh?

Next, try to gradate your charcoal from darkest dark to lightest light.

To gradate a tone, don’t lift your charcoal off the paper.

Gently scribble back and forth, pressing a little lighter or a little harder.

Try it again with a piece of white. You’ll see the bigger range of tone you can get with the combination of the two media.

Don't be a Square!

Using charcoal on a piece of white paper, draw a small square on the top left-hand side of the paper. Fill it in carefully until it is a good, dark black. Then draw another square (it doesn’t have to be too accurate) the same size in the bottom right-hand corner.

Turn the square, by gradually changing each successive shape, into a circle. Fill in each change of shape with less black each time so that by the time you have arrived at a circle shape the tone is grey. Then turn the circle back into the rectangle at the bottom right-hand corner of your paper, getting denser in tone once more.

Drawing Exercise 1

The 3 Basic Elements!

Now you’ve introduced yourself to the three basic elements of drawing:

line,

tone,

and shape.

When you complete drawing exercise 1 and combine these 3 elements with space, you make up the basis of all pictorial art. Line, tone (or light and dark, shading, or chiaroscuro), and shape are the basic way we see things and, with color and space, make up our visual perception of the world.

Do It!

If you have only read this exercise it will not help you learn how to draw. If you read about jogging, does it help you lose weight?

Do the exercise and take a step towards artistic enjoyment.

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