Tonal Drawing

All of us must already known what is drawing. But a good drawing includes a lot of drawing skills.

Artists use different drawing techniques to create the illusion of 3 - D space and forms on flat surface. Although contour drawing is quick and simple, it cannot richly represent a 3 - D object. Artists try using shades. Shading can create 3 - D effects because shading shows the dark and light parts of a surface. This kind of illusion is called the illusion of form.

Artists use tonal drawing to create the effects of light and shadows, or light and dark tones. They use gradual change to create different shades of light and dark. The amount of light or dark in an object or an area is called value.

Shading

When light falls on form, the lit parts appear bright and the shadows appear dark. Shading is used to show the contrast between light and dark. It helps to describe the form.

Artists usually draw the contours of a form first, then add shadows later. Some of the techniques that artists use to show light and dark are hatching, wash and stippling. These techniques show different dark values of shaded or ' filled - in ' areas.

Drawing Mediums

Drawing mediums may be either dry or wet. Dry drawing mediums include pencils, charcoal, coloured chalk or pastels, wax crayons and oil pastels and felt pen. Wet mediums include pen and ink.

Drawing with different mediums creates different effects. When drawing with wet mediums, the type of paper we use is important. For example, lines will be soften when soaking into absorbent paper. Less absorbent paper produces a clear lines.

The hardness and softness of pencils are represented with ' H ' ( hard ) or ' B ' ( black ). ' H ' pencils are hard, so they draw lighter lines. ' B 'pencils are soft, so they draw darker lines. Both ' H ' and ' B ' pencils have different degrees of hardness or softness. These is a number ( usually 1 - 6 ) before the H or B letter on a pencil. This tells you about the degree of hardness of the pencil. A 1H pencil is the least hard, and a 6B pencil is very soft. You can clear up pencil lines with an eraser.

We can also use watercolours to draw some other kinds of picture. And you will find that art can be colourful !!!