Painters Online

Start Art 5 15 www.painters-online.co.uk Texture differentiates between similar shapes Texture communicates the nature of a subject. The two trees in the drawings above are differentiated by their bark textures. The bark tells the viewer that the drawing above is of an old, scarred and weathered tree and the drawing, right, is of a young tree Simple techniques create complex drawings The bee on the flowers (right) was developed the same way as the study of the peanuts. The contrasts of value — light against dark and dark against light —distinguish and project the bee and set it apart from the flowers Extract from Draw Now! By Ruth Glenn Little, published by North Light Books, distributed in the UK by David & Charles, paperback £12.99 Armed only with what you’ve learned in these exercises, you can draw a tree like this one, right 1 Shade to establish a cylinder form, grading values with smooth pencil strokes and a stump. Lift highlights with a kneaded eraser 2 Add the scarring texture and darker values with a soft pencil. Use a 6B woodless graphite stick to produce on each side of the trunk the shapes that merge with the original outline of the shape, allowing it to disappear 3 Use a small, sharpened eraser to lift out grass and leaf shapes. Make the negative space between the leaves and the grass darker with a soft pencil. Working from back to front using a blending stump and a mechanical pencil with 4B graphite, shade each leaf and blade of grass into position Draw now! 1 Begin with a basic shape, such as a circle or square. Add shading and highlights for texture until that shape becomes an object. How many objects can you create from the same basic shape? 2 Follow the same steps you used to draw the peanuts to draw a tree like the one on this page. Begin with blind contour drawings, add the darks and lights, and complete the texture. 3 Choose subjects with very textured surfaces to practise your observation skills. Capture the basic shape and the lights and darks of the subjects first. Add more lights and darks as the drawing progresses. Look only for the lights and darks on your subject; the texture will come out on its own. Draw the tree’s texture