"First Steps" Exercises from DWM Videos

[Mike Sibley]

So in the leftmost portion of the exercise, we create three value gradients, starting with a heavy pressure application and progressing upward and fading to white.

...and not a sign of any airplanes. But also shaded with your usual, and enviable, attention to a smooth application. Gap-free, too.

The middle portion of the exercise shows a soft over hard and a hard over soft application, and these pencils demonstrate the "graphite resist" beautifully.

They do, don't they. Almost perfectly. I should mention that's a method I have successfully used, BUT it cannot be relied on. Maybe always test an unimportant area first.

The lesson to be learned or reinforced here is that hard graphite is always applied over soft. This lesson is taught in every art instruction method that I am familiar with, academic or not...

That - to me - is very interesting, because it's not something I ever head mentioned. It just evolved as a way of working over the years while I was drawing. I've no doubt many artists think they "discovered" a technique or method, too. I certainly thought I'd discovered indenting, maybe 40 years ago, and pre-Internet... but I subsequently met other artists who also thought they's discovered it. Seems we artists are an inventive bunch.

...and rotate it 90 degrees counter-clockwise, and compare it to the computer-generated 9 value scale...

That, to me, seems to be the perfect approach. Having that accurate reference is an excellent way of showing the brain what it's aiming for. If I hadn't used it myself in the past, I'd say it was genius on your part.

In all honesty, I rather like these pencils, they sharpen well, keep their point for a very long time, blend nicely and the application is very smooth, and they are readily available here. I prefer them to the lead holders and the UNI leads, at least for these exercises...

It looks as though you've found the ideal pencils for you in your location. Congratulations. And don't be put off by the brand being unknown to you until now. I was in the same position when I found Ivorex paper. Subsequently, I found it was available in some art shops - but its Mellotex and Conqueror offspring were not. They're both archival offset-litho printing papers. And they suit the way I work, and served to mould it too.

[wayneCol]

"No visible air planes" because I've been working hard to change the way I terminate the gradations and to complete them by lessening the pressure. I must admit that I can complete the gradation a little faster but at the same time unlearning a habit that is automatic is actually quite difficult.

I'm also trying to learn this tapered stroke - tapering the ends I find easy enough, but tapering the start of the line at the moment is requiring a lot of conscious effort ( and the invention of some new profanities ), but persist I shall!

"Hard over Soft" is mentioned (maybe not stressed enough ) to my knowledge by the late Myron Barnstone, Juliette Aristides, Daniel Graves schools in Florence and Sweden, Angel Academy in Florence and the Russian Academy in St Petersburg and Florence, and the Academy of Realist Art in Toronto and Boston.

[Mike Sibley]

"No visible air planes" because I've been working hard to change the way I terminate the gradations and to complete them by lessening the pressure. I must admit that I can complete the gradation a little faster, but at the same time, unlearning a habit that is automatic is actually quite difficult.

I understand that, but I think it's important. I'm not sure if I can clearly explain why, but I'll try.

Ideally, in my opinion, you should practice until the techniques become second-nature. You no longer have to think about them. Now you can draw while only thinking about the content. You are, as I like to say, creating your own world. A world that you live as you create it.

In this case, you can more intuitively fade to white by decreasing the pressure. But physically fading by meticulously hatching short adjacent lines requires conscious thought. And it's slow, which can interfere with your concentration.

The same applies to the Tapered Line. If you have to stop to fix blunt ends, because they are unnatural and distracting, you are breaking your connection with the drawing.

Call it what you like - at one with the art, in the zone, away with the fairies (my preference ) - you really need to develop ways of working that keep you in that creative zone.

Don't get bogged down by technique. Ultimately, they're just tools to achieve a goal, and that goal is THE CREATIVE RESULT. That needs to be your focus, not the methods used to get there.

[wayneCol]

Mike
I am just about finished with the Tapered Stroke exercises from the Pencil Perceptions course - not perfect yet, but improving - enough that I'm going to re-do the Week 2 exercise that showed those awful "rings". So when getting prepared for the blending, I noticed something about "my stroke" and I want your advice.

Attached is the exercise BEFORE blending. The box on the right was done with tapered strokes of 1 inch in three steps - the first a quarter circle, the second the ring from 1" to 2", and the third the ring from 2" to 3". My tapered strokes must be getting better because I don't see any "double layers of graphite".

In the box on the left I was attempting to lengthen my tapered stroke from 1" to 2" and then 3". This caused me a lot of physical pain in my right wrist - the one I broke several years ago and that put me in the hospital for 2 and half months. So much pain in fact that I will not be doing that again. The 1" stroke causes no pain.

My question is this : Are the 1" strokes OK or are longer tapered lines/strokes required?

Second question : I have been thinking about the issue of blending this exercise and I really am a little apprehensive about the "toilet tissue" thing. It has nothing to do with the tissue but rather with the fact that my tissue wrapped, already fat finger will not allow me to see what it is that I'm blending. On the current exercise it probably doesn't matter since we are Ok as long as we stay "in the box", but on a portrait or the (up-coming) lily, I want to see what it is I'm blending. Now for me, tortillons and/or stumps are not an option - academics don't use them and I have no idea where I might get one here, but how about a small cosmetic brush? I don't recall seeing a blending brush anywhere in your kit. So before I blend this exercise, any opinions/ideas?

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[Mike Sibley]

I am just about finished with the Tapered Stroke exercises from the Pencil Perceptions course - not perfect yet, but improving - enough that I'm going to re-do the Week 2 exercise that showed those awful "rings". So when getting prepared for the blending, I noticed something about "my stroke" and I want your advice.

OK - but looking at these, I do see some improvement, but you're not yet fully tapering.

WAYNE-tapers2.jpg

1: All these ends are blunt.
2: This looks like a hooked end that's doubled back on itself.
3: This is the taper you need to be aiming to produce: a PERFECT TAPERED END. There are many more - I just picked this one out in this section.
4: A probably hooked end. Just slow down and come up off the paper before returning to the beginning.

Attached is the exercise BEFORE blending. The box on the right was done with tapered strokes of 1 inch in three steps - the first a quarter circle, the second the ring from 1" to 2", and the third the ring from 2" to 3". My tapered strokes must be getting better because I don't see any "double layers of graphite".

No - so, no hooked ends. But the blunt ends remain. Also, don't use too much weight with the hard grades. Your 2H has indented the paper in the left-hand box - top right corner.

Most of the lines still appear to just stop. Yet, each one should be tapering off to no value at all. The tapers do NOT need to be long, but they must fade to white.

Also, in my opinion, 3" is far too long at this stage. And even unnecessary. "Unnecessary" because once you can successfully taper lines, you can draw 3" in two or more undetectable stages. I'm not saying you shouldn't draw 3" long lines, just that you don't NEED to, once you can taper.

This short demo should help:

(You can also watch this in the VIDEO section: TAPERED LINES)

In the box on the left, I was attempting to lengthen my tapered stroke from 1" to 2" and then 3". This caused me a lot of physical pain... So much pain in fact that I will not be doing that again. The 1" stroke causes no pain. My question is this : Are the 1" strokes OK, or are longer tapered lines/strokes required?

1" is all you need to draw. To draw 3", draw a tapered 1" line. Draw a second 1" tapered line over the first - taper over taper. Then a third. Extending the line each time. Once you get used to it - develop the muscle memory - it's easy! A taper over a taper gives the appearance of a fully solid line, so you achieve the undetectable merging of the lines. I demonstrated that in: DRAWING HAIR Intro (10:45 to 13:10).

Second question : I have been thinking about the issue of blending this exercise, and I really am a little apprehensive about the "toilet tissue" thing... Now for me, tortillons and/or stumps are not an option - academics don't use them... I don't recall seeing a blending brush anywhere in your kit. So before I blend this exercise, any opinions/ideas?

First, watch the LILY VIDEO. You'll see I use a tortillon and a colour-shaper. Like you, I like to see what I'm doing, so I only use toilet tissue for LARGE areas, such as skies.

I might be lying and did use tissue in the Lily? I don't recall - but if I did, it's only because I'm very used to using it. I certainly won't use it in any small areas or areas of detail.

In most cases, I prefer to blend with graphite only - 2H or even 8H over softer grades. But sometimes the removal of ALL line is necessary, and then I'll use a blender. Either a tortillon or a colour-shaper. I don't use stumps (torchons), chamois, or cotton buds. BUT cotton buds might be the answer to your problem? They're small enough for tight places, and can be used very delicately.

Alternatively, turn to page 64 of "Drawing from Line to Life" and make your own tortillons.

OK, so academics don't use them... So, pretend you're a graphite artist instead, because that removes the barrier.

[wayneCol]

Back to the tapered exercises, but just to mention - this is an example of why online/video/Zoom learning probably won't work in the long run. For some skills you need a teacher looking over your shoulder, catching your mistakes early so you don't practice and practice and practice the wrong stuff!
Back in a while ....

Cotton Buds - yes, I forgot about them and they are available. Thanks.

[wayneCol]

Mike
We're in the middle of a fairly powerful typhoon here and the power is on/off and there is lots of deep flooding in low-lying areas. All government offices and banks and many stores are closed. This morning I went downstairs to the pharmacy in the shopping mall to buy some lancets and cotton buds and I noticed that the pharmacy had a "Cosmetics" section so I bought a small soft cosmetics brush - the strange looks from the cashier on the way out were ignored!

But back in my unit, I took a sheet of normal printer paper and the 3 worst drawing pencils ( the MONGOLS ) and I did three gradations. They were all done with the Medici gradation technique (which gives me the best results) but blended differently as marked. For me the best one is the pencil point, followed by the brush and in last place the cotton bud - but frankly none of these mechanical blending techniques ( brush, bud or tissue ) appeal to me very much - I think I would much prefer to spend the time and blend with the pencil. I must admit however that the brush is the fastest of all the techniques, even though you need to spend some time afterward with the kneaded eraser to pick out the dark spots.

The dark vertical lines visible in the third gradation and a few visible in #2 are lines from the front of the paper which the scan picked up - they are not part of the gradation. And the 1,2,3 refer to the grades of the MONGOL pencil which creates that part of the gradation.

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[Mike Sibley]

I'll comment more later, but...

Your application techniques are so smooth and regular that I can easily imagine you never having to blend, unlike we lesser mortals.

From my viewpoint - as one of the latter - I'm not against blending, but I do think it's often overused, or used inappropriately. But in areas of sky or young skin, for example, the removal of all visible line is an absolute necessity, and blending is a good tool to have for that.

As for your brush: it's certainly worth trying. I'm fairly certain Darrel Tank blends with a brush. It's never appealed to me - far too uncontrollable - and it probably accounts for the softness of his drawings.

[wayneCol]

My "application techniques" are the result of the academic training which spends a lot of time with the NoTan stage, value scales and value progressions ( or gradations - NOT graduations, folks, they don't go to school ), and the lightness of the application (maybe many times layered ) to achieve a value.

My feelings are that both the cotton bud and the brush remove an amount of graphite that you can't control. Why spend a lot of time putting down graphite to get the value you want and then blending which removes it, only to put it back in again? You get the point!

I'd rather spend the time with the point ( and the kneaded eraser, or in your case BluTack ) to get the value I want, remove the linearity ( if that's needed ), and it's small enough that I can see exactly what I'm doing.

I don't know if Tank's method uses a brush to blend or not - I never got far enough in any of his videos before his monotonous art-babble put me to sleep, but I do agree that most of his work has a much smaller value range than what I expect. If I remember correctly he does obsess over his supplies, insisting on BLICK STUDIO pencils ( previously TURQUOISE ) and a LangNickel Camel Hair brush ( to clean off eraser crumbs ).

It just occurred to me that I really should spend some time with the 0.5mm mechanical pencils and see what kind of gradations I can get with them. My sense is that they would be great for gradations in small confined areas but not for larger patches but you just never know unless you try. If Diane Wright, or anyone else using mechanical pencils, is reading this, care to comment?

[Mike Sibley]

...value scales and value progressions (or gradations - NOT graduations, folks, they don't go to school)...

Well said! That one always annoys me, too. Another - and I fully accept that America can invent its own words, but - TORTILLION when referring to a TORTILLON. Both TORCHON (solid paper stump) and TORTILLON (hollow paper blender) are French terms. Respectively pronounced TORSHON and TOR-TEE-ON

My feelings are that both the cotton bud and the brush remove an amount of graphite that you can't control. Why spend a lot of time putting down graphite to get the value you want and then blending which removes it, only to put it back in again? You get the point!

Correct in all respects. Blending DOES remove graphite. My colour-shaper rather less than a paper blender, but it still lightens to some extent. However, this can be allowed for by deliberately drawing darker before blending. Or blending and then reapplying the darker values on top.

But if you can achieve perfect smoothness (which you can) then blending really isn't required. And your way of working is definitely more tightly controlled.

I don't know if Tank's method uses a brush to blend or not - I never got far enough in any of his videos before his monotonous art-babble put me to sleep, but I do agree that most of his work has a much smaller value range than what I expect.

He does use a brush. I once survived long enough to watch him blend the drawing of an old barn. I couldn't understand then - and cannot understand now - why he thinks that's a good idea. It simply softens everything and reduced the value range by removing graphite. I don't dislike his soft, dreamy drawings - it's just not to my taste.

You're on your own with the 0.5 mechanicals. I used a couple in the very early days, but soon stopped - only because they added nothing to what I could already achieve with 2mm.