The more I look at this exercise the more confused I get. I have just noticed for example that the shadows under the overhanging eaves on the light side facing us, both of those shadows have penumbras, so either there are 2 primary light sources to the right and above or the light source is very lar...

Exercise 1 - thanks for the complement. I have had lots of practice in the past with hatching/cross-hatching and stippling. Recent wrist problems resulted in me not being very pleased with results of that exercise. I used to have a much better "natural hand rhythm" but now I seem to have d...

Here are the Week Three exercises - well only 2 out of 3 - you'll see why in a moment. myscan0001.jpg For the third exercise, I started to do it when I realized that there is no way that I can understand how to get a cast shadow under the overhang on the shadow side of the house. I re-constructed th...

Thanks for pointing out that 2B/6B box - there is definitely something wrong there - probably the labelling. Oh well, I do understand "hard over soft" and there is little danger of me reversing them in practice. Personally, I think the tapering of the ends of the lines for me is working ve...

Well at long last here are the completed exercises for Week 2 of the Beginner's Book. Interestingly, on the original of this tapered stroke exercise the area where the tapers overlap is just barely visible as a slight lightening of value, so I marked the spot with the arrow at the bottom of the page...

Your comment "It appears to be perfection for perfection's sake." is precisely what academic art is about. It attempts to continue the art traditions of ancient Greek and Roman art and the Renaissance. It has nothing to do with realism and as an example here is Bouguereau's painting "...

It appears that I've opened Pandora's box or touched a nerve. My statement was "Atelier's don't teach the tapered stroke because it's not needed" and it probably should have been "Atelier's don't teach the tapered stroke because it's not needed for academic drawing " - I didn't i...

Mike I am continuing to try to learn these tapered strokes but my damaged and "repaired" wrist is not co-operating much, but continue I shall and yes your demo did help. Meanwhile I have been thinking about why ateliers do not teach the tapered stroke. After all Drawspace, you, Tank and &q...

I think that the particular STABILO pencils that I bought were made in "Malaysia" - they have 3 manufacturing facilities ( according to their website ) Germany, Czech Republic and Malaysia and it is possible that the quality control at each facility is better or worse. The pencils I tested...

I have attached a scan of the third and final test exercise that I do for a new set of pencils, in this case the STABILO Othello brand. This exercise in particular takes a while to complete but it ensures that the entire range of grades is used and that there is enough "pencil mileage" to ...