I was recently asked in Noah's class by another
student to share some of the secrets to my line drawings that can be seen from
the previous post here Art Camp 2 Week 1. The big secret is patience, going
slowly and experience, time. Here is what I told him though:
As for how I get my lines the way they are, and by
this I am assuming you mean accurate or deciding which ones to pick out, the
short answer is experience. I have been doing this since high school back in
the early 90's. But for a better answer consider this when doing these kind of
things:
Every shadow, highlight and in-between tone is a shape. It is as simple
as that and if you outline each one, and I usually try to do it according to
value - darker outlines for darker shapes lighter outlines lighter shapes, then
you get what I did for the studies.
To make them more accurate look at
the study of N.C. Wyeth or the 2nd Bargue copy. There you can see a pretty
tight grid over each drawing. They all have it but these are the 2 that I left
it on. For copying photo reference there's simply no better way, except
possibly tracing it, but I used to suck at tracing so I would just redraw
everything (again lots of practice). At a small level and with patience it is
easier to make sure you are getting the lines set right.
Now to do it
from life there is probably no better way than the atelier way but it doesn't
have to be size sight. I studied at the Safehouse in San Francisco for a little
while which is where Karla Ortiz is from. She was a class ahead of me there. There
we used plumb lines (anything that hangs straight on a line) and knitting
needles to measure things by holding them out at arms length, taking a smaller
measurement - say the width of the head because that fits into the height of
the head and using that to lay in the outline of the form starting with
straight lines boxing it in. So the head is about 1 1/2 head widths high. Easy
enough. Now you know the basic size relation and box size of the head. From
there start using smaller measurements with the more detail you put in and use
the plumb line to check how things really line up vertically. You can also use
the angles of the face like the triangle of the nose pretty much continues on
to the corners of the mouth and to the start of the chin on each side. There is
a good book on atelier drawing called "Lessons in Classical Drawing
Essential Techniques From Inside the Atelier " by Juliette Aristides,
check it out for a crash course on realistic drawing and how to measure out
everything.
So basically define an edge for every "shape".
Start with big measurements and the outside proportions. If those are right
everything else can easily be found. If they are wrong your insides will be way
off and so will the whole drawing. Then get into smaller and smaller shapes and
lines within the drawing.
I did a quick walk through of the steps in
another Frazetta study. I started with the black outline shapes. Then moved to
the red reducing my grid by half then to the blue lines reducing that grid by
half again to tighten up some details. It is still rough but basically what you
will end up with is the final black line drawing. Then if you want to add tone
just pick 3 or 4 tones from white to black and fill in the shapes accordingly.
I go with 100% White, 100% Black, 50% Black and 20% Black for my tonal studies.
