I have been learning a bit about different techniques for drawing and have figured that one of the fundamental techniques for pencil art is hashing. That’s a very effective technique to create shades. When using charcoal, the technique is primarily smudging (and it is messy). Hashing is interesting because one you can get the idea right, you can work out detailed shading with 1 or maybe 2 pencils. This is also a useful when sketching with ball point pens too.

Here is a take on a nice image I found on the Internet. I found hashing shapes a bit tricky but I suppose the idea is to blend various micro hashes to show subtle gradations and shapes. I have not got the highlights too and lost the 3D’ness of the image. More practice is in order.

Landscapes are tricky, as I mentioned earlier. The trick I am employing is to isolate individual elements and try to practice drawing them. I looked through the list of images and managed to narrow down to a few with very harsh lighting. The nice thing about harsh lighting is that there is very little gradation in the shades  you have very deep blacks and very bright whites. The image I chose to draw at the end was a early dry tree (more like a shrub) titled San Rafael Reef. This is also from the set of excellent images in the Ancient shape of man.

I have isolated the plant from the slightly more complex background. I guess I could have worked a bit more to showing some of the environment but decided I would keep it for future projects. The sun seems right overhead, The photographer has employed much skill in determinng the right exposure and developing / printing the image. It is usually very difficult to bring suble shades with harsh afternoon light but the image manages to do that. Was a nice challenge to see if I can get anywhere close to the actual print.

I am reading this book called “Drawing on the right side of the brain“. The book is pretty nice in assuring that ‘anyone’ can draw. Which is my belief too. Like I mention earlier and often, this does not mean that one can immediately be creative. However, it is possible to pick up the technical aspects of trawing and the ability to see what is out there and be able to put it on paper.

One of the exercises was to create a baseline before reading the book. The author asked the reader to draw 3 things, one of which was your hand. It stuck me that there is very little reason to go around hunting for complex images to draw when we have one literally at the end of our hand (heh). The play of light and teh complex shadows it creates makes it challenging to draw it properly. Well I have tried and may be by the end of the book, I can do better.

Note: My hand is naturally crooked with too many bends. Come to think of it, I wonder how I can function normally with fingers shaped the way they are…