Sketching The Sky

Often times when we are sketching the sky we want allusion of a smooth, subtle, flat sky that is glossy rather than seeing hard lines made by sketching. To create this smooth, glossy, flat sky you need to blend. Blending is key to creating this allusion. Charlie Bowater suggest not using a pencil unless you are really careful because pencil lines do not blend properly (78). I did try to use a normal lead pencil, as you can see from my swatch above, but it didn't blend properly. Where as when I used a graphite pencil, which is my bottom swatch,  it blended much easier.

Along with using the right tool, you should make swatches to get a feel for how you would want your sky. When you do your swatches, keep using the blending stick and add more scribbles as you need. With drawing clouds to use the same technique. You darken the areas around the clouds to define the tops of your clouds. Then you can also sketch the outline of your clouds as you can see from the image below my attempt at it. With practice you can get a better result, but this was my first attempt at it.

Bowater advises "using a smaller blending stick to continue witting away at the cloud shapes"(78). But I don't think that is that important, because there are other techniques to add more detail then having to use a smaller blending stick. But you can if you would like. I prefer making a darker outline and doing it; but you can do it either way. With these tips you can make a start to make a scene. because just clouds don't make much. Make sure when you do this you are using a kneaded eraser to help highlight and bring out edges. Using these tips and a little creativity you can have a very successful sky.
How do you draw your skies? What techniques work for you and do these techniques help to improve your sketches? 
Bowater, Charlie. Beginner's Guide to Sketching: Characters, Creatures & Concepts. 3DTotal Publishing, 2015.

Sketching Reflective Surfaces

Sketching reflective objects can be hard. But knowing the basic techniques of reflection can help enhance your sketches and take them to a new level. To know how to draw these shinny objects you need to know the basics of reflecting before mastering it. Charlie Bowater suggests knowing your environment and where the light hits your object (80). I agree with this suggestion because knowing you environment helps you to know where and how you would draw your reflection. For example I drew a metal shield; for the environment I drew a sun to symbolize the light coming from the top, along with two rectangular objects, one dark rectangle and one light rectangle.

Now with that environment, you determine the effects of your environment on our object. For example the sun in the middle would reflect a very shinny light, causing the center of your shield to be very light. The side with the dark rectangle would have a dark reflection, and would cause that side to be darker. Where as the side with the lighter rectangle would have a lighter reflection. As you can see from the picture below I have arrows indicating how this part of the environment effected the metal shield.

Beside the environment effecting the object, there are other factors that can effect the the object's reflection. According to Bowater " the consistency of your surface will have the biggest impact on the reflection" (80). Which is quite true because if your object it circular or has rounded edges you have to take those factors under consideration when you think about how your environment and the impact it has on your object. Depending on the consistency, your reflections me change a bit to highlight certain parts. For example if your object is round the reflection would change a bit to capture the roundness of your object and the environment around the object. Or if you have a tube as your object and you are reflecting things off that tube you need to consider how the consistency of the tube will affect the reflections; the effects of the tube will have is  it will reflect your  environment to appear slimmer. Another factor you have to take in consideration is if your object it matte. If so then you object will have a blurred and softer reflection instead of being intense and the smaller details would get lost. Lastly, Bowater suggest you consider the form of your object, because your object will always reflect the environment around it but in different forms (80). Which is true, because when you draw a cube as I have done in the images below, you see the light reflects in in different areas and some sides of the cube are darker than others because light hits it in a different way. Where if I had a shinny sphere it would reflect everything around it, making the scene around the it crammed in the in the reflection.

By taking all these considerations and precautions will help you draw a successful reflective surface, that can help enhance the quality of your sketches.

What object do you find difficult to make reflective? And do you think these tip will help you draw reflective objects and make the process easier?

Bowater, Charlie. Beginner's Guide to Sketching: Characters, Creatures & Concepts. 3DTotal Publishing, 2015.

Sketching Curly Hair

When it comes to sketching curly hair most people dread it. Often people see them as hard to do and hard to get the look they want with them. But according to Charlie Bowater "if you understand how they work, it is a lot easier" (71).  To understand how they work you need to know how to draw them. First I started off with two vertical lines and added a wavy line down the middle. Now depending on how far apart and long you draw the lines will affect the width and length of your curl.  Also when doing this step make sure that the lines you draw are light because those lines are like the guidelines for sketching the curls. Then draw another wavy line a little below the other one.  After that connect the open parts and lastly, remove the guidelines and add detail.  Now when drawing curls variety is key. A tip from Bowater is "look at the hair and how it behaves, simplify, and then draw" (71). Using that tip you are going to have to change the width of your curls, make them slimmer or thicker, split and pull the curl together so the curls look more lively and bouncy as well as you get variety with the curls. As well as you will get a better understanding of how they work and how to add detail to your curls.

Finally when drawing a curly hairstyle, make the curls look natural when drawing the guidelines give it some flow and direction. Then draw the curls.

Bowater suggests that using this technique you can layer the curls one after the other (71). I have tried layering the curls using this technique but it is a little time consuming, though it does give you a better results then what I have tried before.
What techniques help you draw curly hair and do you often dread drawing curly hair? 
Bowater, Charlie. Beginner's Guide to Sketching: Characters, Creatures & Concepts. 3DTotal Publishing, 2015.

Shading Techniques

Shading is an essential part of sketching.  As Bowater states "Shading techniques are very important and prevent your sketches from looking flat" (31).  Which is quite true because the contrast from the dark and the light help your sketches look more realistic and natural. The simplest shading technique are regular and hatching lines. When using this method the line should be parallel and all you do it move your tool left to right or up and down. This technique is the commonly used and can be used on almost every type of drawing says Bowater (31).  You can often see this technique when shading in skin, values, backgrounds, and etc. I have shown this style by drawing a circle and and using this technique to fill in. You can see how it adds a little more dimension to a simple circle.

  The next technique I will be talking about is cross- hatching. It is very similar to regular/hatching lines except you layer the lines on top of each other. In Bowater's words " cross-hatching involves one set of lines crossing over another set, creating volume" (32). Which is the simplest way to define this technique and give sense of of how to do. As you can see I started with another circle and I first did the basic hatching lines (which is the technique mentioned up) then I made another set of lines perpendicular to create the cross- hatching effect. Bowater suggests finding an angle that seems natural and work consistently  when cross- hatching (32).  I believe this is important because when the strokes feel more natural it is easier to shade in your sketches and have a better overall result.

Finally the last technique I would like to cover is circular shading. This technique uses the overlapping of a circular pattern and is very similar to when we scribble/fill in objects except this has the presence of a circular pattern. This is a great way to give more of a solid appearance as well as blend different colors in when sketching in color. You can see that I did this in another circle as I have been doing in my previous examples and you can notice that when you use circular shading you can find see some of the circular pattern mentioned above.

Now these are only 3 shading techniques, there are several other shading techniques and all have a different ways of enhancing your sketches and bringing them to life.

Do you think when shading you should find an angle that feels natural and not just in cross- hatching but any type of shading technique?And why?
 Bowater, Charlie. Beginner's Guide to Sketching: Characters, Creatures & Concepts. 3DTotal Publishing, 2015.

Learning The Basic Fundamentals of Sketching: Using Basic Shapes

Ever since we are little, we learn how to draw; though it may not be the best we still draw and sketch. Sketching and drawing are some of the ways we show our creativity. Using my creativity, I have decided to learn how to sketch. With sketching there are a few fundamentals that play a role in order to create various types of drawings. Most of those fundamentals have to do with shading. As Charlie Bowater in the Beginner's Guide to Sketching says " Light patterns, such as objects having light and shadowed areas, help when creating the illusion of depth on paper. Since you have your pencil in your hand, you can decide what other people see" (19).  When working with basic shapes and learning light patterns and shadowed areas have a big impact on how your sketch will turn out. With your creativity you can chose with what you would like people to see. I will take you through some of the fundamentals of shading using the basic shapes. First I drew a circle, oval, and square.

 Starting with basic shapes helps because you can make many variations and combinations. With these basic shapes you can elevate them into a sphere, cube and cone. When sketching Bowater recommends not use to much pressure (18).  Sometimes we have a tendency of putting a lot of pressure while we are trying to draw something out which can become hard to fix if you make a mistake while drawing.

Now as you can see in the pictures above I started with minimal pressure until I was done with sketching out my shapes and was pleased with my final shapes. From there start the basic fundamentals of shading. From the step above I went on to shade in my shapes. But before I shade I had to chose where I would want to highlight. Now highlighting is where the light hits your shape and those areas are the brightest. Once that decision was clear I started to shade in my shapes while making sure the areas I want the light to hit are brighter/lighter than the rest of my shape. With that came cast shadows. Because once you are done highlight/shading you want to know where the shadow of you object would lay. Cast shadows is an important feature because it can help make you object look as if it were actually placed on top of something and give it more of a 3-dimensional shape. I would recommend when you do this step to sketch out how you would like your shadow then shade it in. As Bowater states "the further a cast shadows is from the object which it casts it, the lighter and less defined the edges look" (19).  Using what Bowater said helps make that shadow of your shapes look more like a shadow than a mirror image.  The last fundamental is reflecting light. It is similar to highlighting and closely related. With reflecting light you take the the areas you would like to highlight and lighten it up making it seem more natural.

As you can see you can take an eraser and erase the small areas where the light reflects the most. You only want to erase small areas because the area around it have to gradually get darker making it so the light is focused on a specific area. Now with that said you can also erase edges as well were the light reflects as I did to the cube.

Using all those fundamentals that was my product.

 Do you agree with Bowater that you can make people see what you want them to see using shading techniques?

 Bowater, Charlie. Beginner's Guide to Sketching: Characters, Creatures & Concepts. 3DTotal Publishing, 2015.