Introduction:
Artists generally draw and paint certain types of subject matter.
The most common categories are: 1. Landscape: The artist paints the countryside,
mountains, oceans, or city scenes. 2. Portraits/Figural: The artist depicts people
doing activities or captures how they look. 3. Still Life: The artist draws or
paints fruit, floral arrangements, or other objects. Today, as an artist, you
will concentrate on drawing a still life or picture with objects in it.
Materials:
White drawing
or sketch paper, preferably 14"x17" or larger
Newsprint
paper for practice sketches
Drawing
pencils (2B or 4B recommended)
Pink pearl
or white vinyl eraser
Directions:
Contour drawing – a contour drawing is a simple way to start
drawing. In this exercise you will focus on the outline or edges of the object.
Don't worry about shading yet!
1) Take a simple object like an iron, bottle, cup, or shoe and put it on a table
in front of you.
2) Look carefully at the object and draw on your paper the edges of the object
without raising your pencil from the paper. For fun you can do this without even
looking at your paper. Lines will overlap and that's okay. You are just focusing
on the edges that define the object.
Shaded or Value Drawing
– a value drawing shows the light and dark areas of an object or group of
objects.
1) Take a simple object and place it on a table in front of you. If possible put
a light on one side of it, so one side has light on it and the other side is in
shadow.
2) Look carefully at the object and concentrate on both the edges and contours
of the object. This time, use your pencil to draw some areas of the object darker.
Apply more graphite from the pencil in these areas. To show the lighter areas,
simply let the whiteness of the paper show and don't shade it. Don't apply dark
strokes of pencil to these areas.
Other Concepts –
1) Composition: Think about where you would like to draw the object on the
paper. Do you want to draw a mostly vertical or horizontal picture? Do you
want to place the object in the middle of the paper or to the side or towards
the top or bottom?
2) Perspective: How objects relate to each other concerning their position
in space is called perspective. The size they appear to be in space is also
a part of perspective. Using perspective makes a drawing look three-dimensional
even though it is on a two-dimensional piece of paper.
Resources:
We Imagine We Draw Objects. Barron's Educational Series, Inc. Hauppauge, New York,
1997.
