Guidelines...

[Rist]

Good mentoring thread. I have been following along with my own attempts. Need more exercises now!

[Sigit]

My work for the second assignment. My line always shaky, any tips??

[Azalin]

quick question, is it ok to turn the paper to do the hatching? i´ve read somewhere it wasn´t recommended...
hey sigit i find your lines pretty good, nice face also

[Sigit]

thanks arkos. But I think my line still shaky and not smooth enough.

[Rist]

Originally Posted by Sigit

thanks arkos. But I think my line still shaky and not smooth enough.

ccsear' will probably have the answer. The way I do it is have the side of my hand planted firmly on the page; make sure the ink is dry underneath though! I use the natural curve of turn of my wrist to make my lines; from left to right with a right hand, just so that I can see the line I made while I make it. Also I hold my pen like I sketch, with the tube inbetween the forefinger and the middle finger; this allows my brain to turn off the logical side of writing and turns on the artistic side of drawing, but more important is it feels natural.

ccsears could I post my results? I do not known if you have mentees or just helping anyone who joins in.

[Azalin]

Hey Rist, thanx for your tip. i´ll try to hold my hand like you say it might help me loosen up my lines. About posting, please do join, this is an open thread for anyone who is interested in it.

[ccsears]

Sorry about not keeping up guys, but work is very busy right now.

Rist Feel free to post your results here.

Arkos78 Sure, turn the paper if you need to. Do whatever's natural. When you learned to write in kindergarten or whatever, they didn't force you to keep your paper perpendicular to the sides of the table, did they?

Sigit If you're drawing the same size I suggested, your work is shaky because you're hitting the physical limit of your ability to hatch. This is very important to understand... when you are drawing construction lines, large rhythms, or anything that is using line as an outline or a shape, use whatever part of your body comes naturally. that generally means you move your elbow shoulder and wrist to make a big line, and your wrist and fingers to make a short line. BUT when you are hatching you more or less need to keep your wrist still on the paper and use your fingers to draw many repeating parallel lines. the physical limit of your ability to do this is somewhere between 1.5 to 2 cm (0.5 to 1.0 inches).

think of it this way... it is difficult to draw a 10" long straight line. it will be next to f'ing impossible for you to get 50 straight lines and maintain an even space in between them so you can use them as hatching.

therefore, it is incredibly important that you come up with a strategy for covering a large shape with an even tone. This is very difficult, but there are many strategies you can choose from. If you are not using ballpoint pen, you need to realize that you will be hatching in small patches roughly 3/4 inch big. you can choose to make these patches follow the contours and planes of the form, you can choose a random pattern (like i did in most of these exercises) or you can choose to keep them as parallel as possible. But you need to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the strategy you choose, and adapt to them.

In Sigit's last post, you see a very parallel type approach--different than what I chose to do in many of the beginning exercises. When you use this approach, be very careful with the beginnings and endings of your lines--if they cross other hatching lines you've already laid down, they may inadvertantly cause dark splotches to creep into your work. the bottom line is to use your own eyes and see if the overall tone is even. if you think it is splocthy or irregular, then you need to adjust your technique or strategy.

To do that, turning your paper may be necessary. BUT, i suggest turning your paper for hatching only--AFTER you've done your correct line drawing.

please notice what i said on Sigit's value scale. when you go towards the light side of the scale, it starts to look more like stripes and less like an even tone. when the gap between your line is 20 times the thickness of your line, YOU CAN NOT USE THAT LINE IN THAT SITUATION TO MEAN TONE. it will automatically read as OUTLINE or DETAIL.

that is the underlying reason pen and ink work is difficult. either you learn to leave certain areas blank, or you learn that your lightest tone (besides blank paper) is somewhere around 50% black line and 50% white gap. THIS IS SUPER IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND AND IT AFFECTS EVERYTHING YOU WANT TO HATCH. if you don't understand this point, please ask me a question here before we go on to new exercises.

thanks,
chris

[HunterKiller_]

Thanks again for your time, Sir.

Made a big mess of the face. Hard to decide exactly which style of hatching to use in which areas.
Not mention I made the forbidden error of spacing too widely the hatching on the cheek.

[Sigit]

ccsears can you give me example in hatching 2 values before light?

[Reign]

Cool thread!
I did some of the exercises, but - I clearly don't have a clue what Im doing when Im trying to hatch these goddamned faces...










I tried different tools for the faces. It seems that my sharpie (last pic) is way too wide, while ballpoint pen and gel pen "break" a line a lot, and make splotches...
Maybe I should go buy something better...







Any crits&comments are welcome!

[Haruon]

Man, wish i found d tread earlier.. Struggling with hatching n stuffs.. Thanks for this thread.. Could i post my exercises that i've done here?

[ccsears]

hello everybody,

sorry i haven't been able to keep up with this thread for a while. i've had major life changes to deal with--quitting a job, moving into a new apartment, getting new jobs, painting portraits, etc. i think i will be able to start replying to your posts soon--probably in a week or two. i have one family gathering i need to attend out of state.

anyway, everyone is free to post what they've done for the exercises. the guidelines are up there on the first page and it's all common sense. i.e. don't put oil paintings in with the pen and ink work.

will write more soon, i hope.
ccs

[Azalin]

Cool to hear your coming back! looking forward for the next painful assignment

[ccsears]

So here are a few ideas/principles to think about. Maybe it's best if we just start back up by having you guys ask a few questions about what I've drawn on this page and what it means. Then I can pick up and figure out a good direction to proceed.

[armetage]

Here comes my contribution to the first exercise
I used a Pilot VBall Grip 05
Conclusions of pen: High flow of ink, very hard to do pressure and thin lines, pretty expencive pen 4 euros, i tried a
b-7 Uchida tokyo/japan ballpointpen aswell and it had a lower flow of ink which made shading and line width easier but a little less quality on the ink.

[UnSharpened]

First of all, thank you for your effort to put all these together, it's really helpful for me to figure out my own problem of drawing.

In principle 1&2 of your latest post, I think I can understand how it work. Yet I wonder which one of the two demonstrations of principle1 is against principle 2. Both of them look fine actually, though the first one obviously needs more control of strokes. I am asking this because I feel confused when I hatch faces such as the section from cheek to jaw, following the direction of jaw? or go vertical? Thing like this is always bugging me.

Hope what I said makes sense, and thanks again for your time.

[HunterKiller_]

Thanks for continuing with this thread, Sir.

After trying out both techniques, I think they both have their merits.
There are situations where hatching against the contour just looks bad and is confusing.

I can't think of any good questions, but I think I would like to further explore the different techniques of hatching and where they should be applied for the best effect.

Thanks.

[ccsears]

Here's a reference photo of marilyn monroe...

here's my pen and ink version

here's a reference photo of ava gardner

here are some pen and ink versions of it.


NOTE: keep in mind these show up on the computer monitor at approximately DOUBLE the size that i drew them!!! Notice the 1" scale on the right of my second drawing.

Here, I used a sakura pigmaliner 005 pen on some translucent drafting mylar. I "traced" (which really isn't the right word here) these all in under an hour. Notice what's going on though.

In the MM drawing, I've clearly separated light and shadow. Since I'm drawing a head that's roughly 4-5" tall, I really can't go to pure black with hatching or it will take all day to finish. I've simplified the edges greatly, but notice what direction I drew them. From the beginning, I knew that I wanted to capture the shadow shapes, and I took the most direct route possible.

Also notice what I chose to leave out: almost all the modeling in the light. In the reference photo, notice the space between her upper lip and the bottom of her nose... it gradually turns in value, like a ball or cylinder from light to halftone. And it's beautiful, no question about it. In charcoal or pencil, I could pull it off no problem, but it would most likely look like absolute crap if I tried to capture that in pen and ink.

"Well," you might say, "Why don't you just darken everything a bit and give yourself room in the value-scale to pull it off?" it's a judgment call, that's for sure. But I decided early on that given these lighting conditions in the photograph, the most important thing I wanted to capture was beautiful shapes of light and shadow--NOT the halftones. Anyone who says that the first thing they noticed about this photograph is the beautiful halftones is full of shit.

So, to make a long story short, 1) it is technically super difficult to capture halftones in this situation, 2) the halftones are not what i want to emphasize, 3) halftones would interfere with the more beautiful eye/eyelash and lip/lipstick/mouth shapes, 4) it's a glamorous female subject--less is more when it comes to the face, We could argue all day about whether and what we could technically do in pen and ink...so there's number 5, I've got my own shit to draw and can't spend all day rendering this one just to prove it could be done.

Now, look at the one on the bottom. Here are a couple of problems and mistakes, and one solution. This is a different lighting situation--here we have 2 light sources--a very strong rim light that turns everything pure white, and a weaker bounce light that lets us see her face.

The one in the top left... too much modelling, not enough simplicity...
The one in the top right... could work, but it's going to be rough.
The bottom one, yes it works. why? again because i've trapped the values into easily understood shapes.

This is a female subject, obviously. If I took the time to render everything in the shadow side of her face--the turning of the top and side planes of her cheek, the darker halftones on her nostril, all of that stuff-- it would get confused and "overworked" like the one on the top left. Also, notice the scale that I'm drawing at; this head is only about 1.5 inches tall.

Remember my lecture about how SCALE influences the range of values? This is a perfect example. Remember also how I lectured about not letting your hatching interfere with your linework? Also a perfect example. If I went into modeling the forms here, I would get something overworked, dirty/fuzzy, and chances are that I would lose my lines by trying to capture everything. Since the subject is female, I would also probably lose a lot of her femininity in the process. My solution was to break this into three values--core shadow/black, rim light white, and fill light gray. In order to keep her face smooth, I decided that I was going to half to fill it with uniform, even parallel hatching, and since the face was only 1.5 inches tall I thought I could pull that off.

So let's backtrack a second and go through this step by step:

(I) I drew in the shadow shapes and darkened them. Even at this small scale, notice how I suggested edges on the forehead--some parallel strokes indicate a soft edge gradation. There's a hint of the same in the shape between her eye and eyebrow.

(II) I also indicated, with a somewhat broken line, the outline of the rim light (the pure white spots). Here you have to achieve a balance between capturing a graphic shape and outlining it too darkly. When it goes too dark, you lose the suggestion of a "glow". Keep in mind my lecture about the value of a line. since you can't draw with "half-black" ink (at least with this pen) the only way to make a line lighter is to use a broken/dashed/dotted line.

(III) Very f*cking carefully, I filled in the side of her face with a uniform parallel line pattern. This keeps her femininity. Also notice that I chose to do this hatching vertically. In the back of my mind, I was worried about interfering with the more horizontal features like her mouth and eyes and eyebrows. Also notice that I didn't literally fill everything in and draw the lines straight through all of the features. Even when I'm doing something "monotonous" and "boring" like this, I pay attention and judge the spacing to avoid "fuzzing out" the linework and darks. This is very important! The easiest example to see is the white of her eye...I didn't continue my hatching through there. Also remember what I said about scale and value...the white of her eye is about the same size as the width between my hatching lines. so her eye already has the same gray as her cheek--which is what we want here. also notice what i did on the side of her nostril, i tried to keep that little c-curve in there.

Another reason I chose to use vertical lines is to subliminally suggest a vertical cylinder. In my mind her head is more like a vertical cylinder than a horizontal one, so this psychologically suggests that. (It's complicated, and comes with experience. if you get this great, if not, don't worry)

[B](IV)[/B] So now that i think about it, I realize Imight have been able to pull off a hint of her cheek... i'll think about it and get back to you guys...
so here it is...

Notice that I've added what amounts to some soft shading on her temple and cheek and chin and I've extended the gradation across her forehead. Gives a more rendered feeling.


Summary Besides accuracy in drawing, proportion, and all of that, I'm always fighting a battle of two ideas in my head when I draw this way.

1) get good shapes with the right edges in the right places, organize the values of these shapes

vs.

2) don't f*ck up your organization! in other words, always double-check to make sure your hatching doesn't interfere with your line work, your hatching doesn't interfere with your shapes, your linework doesn't affect your value, etc.

This double-checking comes automatically with a lot of experience and mileage. And even then you will occasionally screw up if you're not careful. Because ink is more or less permanent and hatching has all those limitations I lectured on and on about, it really demands an organized approach.


a bonus for you guys, another little inspirational piece of crap...
When I first started drawing with the big boys in junior high and high school, rendering was a big deal--look at how softly i can turn a form, look at how subtly i can smooth an edge, look at the highlights i can pop. With enough practice and enough time, any jackass can do that. you can train a monkey to do it.

What sets you apart is your ability to organize and simplify, to deal with limitations of your medium and your deadlines. That is what will make you a successful artist in the long run. Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of spontaneity in art...everything is not boring and predetermined. The fun you will find is that balance between what you know, the principles you understand, and what you don't know, the challenge of a new piece of art. think about it like hunting a tiger... you're not going to chase it without knowing how to shoot a bow and arrow or throw a spear. and you're not going to chase it without an understanding of how tigers act and what they can do.

...and you better not go chasing tigers unless you're both brave and you understand how dangerous they are.

art is hard, art takes practice. but art is exciting, art is challenging, and art could make a fearless person out of you.

ccs

[ccsears]

ASSIGNMENT:

If you can, get some tracing paper that will work with whatever pen you're using. Then do the same thing I did here with a black and white photograph. Repeat until you "get it right" Ask questions when you post them.

If you can't find tracing paper that works for you, try lightboxing or using the sun on a window.

If that doesn't work, do a very light pencil LINE drawing (not value!!!) and do your inking over that.

Faces, people. I want to see some head studies. Various sizes too, from 1-4"

[Azalin]

Wow really great tutorials mate, too bad i cant do them atm cause im on vacations, but cant bearly wait to get home to start working on them... ok not that eager to get home, just eager to start practicing

[Sigit]

My first try. I think mine looks bad. The second picture is the reference that I get from the internet since I can't find any black and white picture. And then I draw by looking at that picture in my computer

[ccsears]

Sigit You picked a super-hard picture to work from the first time. There are kinds of exceptions to the rules and subtle things going on in this picture. Rather than give you a bunch of detailed critique on it, I think you should do another one first.

Well, a couple of pointers...

1) you've outlined all the shadow shapes with a single, thin line. whenever you completely enclose a shape with a line, it turns into a flat shape instead of a form.

2) I can tell by how you're drawing that you're concetrating very hard on likeness. If you can, draw some or most of it in pencil first and use a pen that can handle being erased. Ballpoint is kind of halfway between pencil and true pen and ink since you can get varying degrees of shading out of it. The downside is that it will smudge if you try to erase pencil from undrneath/around it. If you've only got ballpoint, then it might help to find a way to print out your reference photo and trace or use a lightbox/window.

3) If you're having trouble finding b/w reference, use color reference and turn it into b/w in photoshop. (In photoshop, the shortcut is Shift-Apple-U to desaturate). If you don't have Photoshop, then most image viewing programs have some kind of adjustment for saturation--Preview in Mac and probably some kind of generic MS Windows picture viewer will do it. Or, you could print a bunch out in color and run them through a copy machine. Also, check newspapers. there are usually a decent number of black and white pictures in newspapers. The xerox machine is the easiest though if you have one nearby. I go to Kinko's all the time.

[Sigit]

My second attempt

[Azalin]

It´s been quite a few days since i wanted to work on this exercises, unfortunately didn´t have much spare time to work on it, until now!!!
so here´s my first try, 8 cm big, done with a copic multiliner 0.05, i think at the end i overdid it a bit, but not sure thou, you might be a better judge to that, anyway it was a fun thing to do, and didn´t take me that much time 1 1/2 hour more or less since in a little format, not like the chicken post i did before (A4 format took me 6 hours). At the beginning i only wanted to do the darks and lights but somehow i started working on the mid tones as well, was this a good decision? anyway i post some more on the days to come...

did i mentioned what a good tutorial this is?

[Azalin]

In this one i didn´t want to do to much hatching, since its a woman i thought i could ruin here femininity (like you mentioned b4), could work more on the right part of the hair but decided not to, since i didn´t find it that interesting... hope this one is ok.

[Azalin]

here´s are my next ones, 2 versions of the same, not sure which is better thou, the one i like the most hasn´t got that much contrast in it, and if i push the values i think it going to look the same as the other one at the end, not that it´s bad or is it?

[ccsears]

Azalin Wow! There's a lot of improvement in these! Well done.

as far as crits go, there are a few things, but they're more like adjustments than "do-over" type crits.

1) on the first guy, i think the "far" side (on the left of the picture) needs to be knocked down in value slightly. the rendering on the near side looks great, but to match that lighting the far side needs to go just a little bit darker. not too dark or it will get distracting, but right now the inside of that hat flap is almost as light as his cheek on the light side. still, this is a second-read crit. on first-read, the image is great.

2) only thing to work on with the female head is your edges. very difficult to get that kind of rapid transition from super dark to very light, but if you noodle with it a little, it will soften up.

3) very good. i think the eye on the right side of the picture is a little large, but overall very good. next time, think about ways you could use different textures to capture the "feel" of a beard. right now, you have great shapes and edges with it, but you might be able to add in some texture to push it even further.

4) overall, the value is right for how you've scaled it, and the drawing is very good. the only thing that bothers me with this one is the hatching on the dark side. right now, when the little "patches" of hatching meet, their intersections get kind of dark and it distracts the eye a little. it's not the texture or the fact that you used lots of little patches to do it, it's just that those seams are too noticeable. still, great job on the drawing of this one.

Sigit There's good and bad going on here. The good thing is that you've become very aware of shapes, where the light shapes, highlight shapes, etc. are. and you're starting to design them well. The bad thing is that the value organization is getting a little out of control. keep in mind that a face is generally a pretty round form--there aren't many lines on the surface of it. When you use line to separate light and shadow, you should draw a somewhat soft, blurry line to represent the core shadow. but you should not use line to separate light from highlight from halftone, etc. line is a very decisive tool and, in general, you can only use that tool for two things in a drawing like this--1) contour/outline and 2) separating light from dark tonally. even for 2) it's a bit strong to use line to separate light and shadow on this model's face. (compare how close the values are on her cheeks on each side--not too much contrast compared to how dark her hair is)

[Azalin]

Hey Ccsears!
glad you liked them, means a lot to me, being one of your fans

On the first one your right, i didn´t noticed i put too much dark value on the hat flap, and on the far side i´ll do some more hatching so that it doesn´t look lighter than the near side.

About the girl, it´s pretty hard to make that transition all right, guess the edges are are too hard, you think i should soften it like i did with the chin? or would that be too much? ...ill have to experiment.

3) textures? didn´t you want to make a tutorial about it? J.K.

4) i think i should do those little patches with another pen, like a ballpoint, cause with the copic fine liner it always comes out like that, at the begining & end of a line it´s always a little thicker , that´s what makes it intersections so noticeable.

again mate cheers for your comments & crits, i´ll keep practicing and posting them here if you don´t mind btw i just ordered J. C. Coll: A Legacy in Line today, can´t wait to do study from him , i´ll wait till next month for the art of adventure cause here it goes for about 50 Euros.

[Azalin]

so here´s one from Sean Connery, i think i overworked it a bit, repeated the same mistake as in the last post with those darks forming from the intesection of the "patches" i´ll use another pen next time, also the white from the eyes didn´t came out good, not happy with this one overall, but i least i think i nailed the soft edges... kind of

I also tried to do the same exercise with a black prismacolor but it got all messy and uneven, so i left it out, maybe next time... in the mean time i´ll stick to hatching, that´s why this thread is for anyway.

[Sigit]

Another of my attempt
Azalin your drawings and the hatching looks good . Can you share any tips