59 techniques · a visual for each
Techniques
Tools
Pencils, grips, points, paper, erasers, set-up.
Pencil grades
H is hard and light, B is black and soft. Five grades do everything the masters did.
The two grips
Overhand for mass and long lines, tripod for contour and detail. Both are used in every drawing.
The long point
Eight to ten millimetres of exposed lead, shaped with a knife and a sandpaper block. One pencil, two tools.
Board, light and posture
Tilt the board, light from the side opposite your hand, sit back, slip sheet under the hand.
Paper and tooth
Graphite sits on the peaks of the paper's texture. The grain is a tool, not a flaw.
Erasers as drawing tools
A kneaded eraser lifts lights out of tone. A precision eraser draws a highlight. Neither is for mistakes.
Marks
Lines, hatching, pressure, layers, flat tone, gradients.
Ghosting a line
Rehearse the line in the air three times, then land it once, moving from the shoulder and looking at the end point.
Line weight
Heavier where the form is in shadow, where it touches the ground, and where it is near. Lighter where it is lit and far.
Six families of mark
Parallel, cross, contour, scumble, stipple, broken. Each has a job. All six live in one drawing.
Value by spacing
Same pencil, same pressure. Close the gap between lines and the tone gets darker. This is how an etcher thinks.
The pressure ramp
One continuous band from nothing to full dark, using pressure alone. Ten a day for a week.
Layering, not pressure
Reach a value with a softer pencil and lighter layers, never a harder pencil and more force. Pressure is a one-way door.
An even field of tone
Overlapping strokes, feathered ends, two light layers at different angles. No rows, no dark stroke-ends.
A smooth gradient
Each layer starts a little further along than the last. Change direction between layers. Bands vanish.
Value
The scale, notan, edges, and the squint.
The nine-step value scale
One is paper, nine is the darkest dark. Lights 1 to 3, halftones 4 to 6, darks 7 to 9. Learn it like a musician learns a scale.
Notan: two, three, four values
The arrangement of light and dark. If the design works at two values, it will work finished. If it does not, nothing will save it.
Hard, soft and lost edges
A hard edge is a cut-out. A soft edge turns. A lost edge is air. Every form needs at least one of each.
Squinting
Half-close your eyes until the detail vanishes and only three or four masses remain. Draw what survives.
Seeing
Sighting, measuring, alignments, negative shapes, blocking in, light on form.
Sighting angles
Hold the pencil at arm's length, tilt it to match the edge, carry the tilt to the paper. Compare to plumb and level, never to the previous line.
Comparative measurement
Pick a unit, mark it with your thumb on the pencil, and count how many units everything else is. Nobody can judge size; everybody can count.
Plumb and level
Drop a true vertical and a true horizontal through the scene and read what lines up with what. Alignments are free accuracy.
Negative shapes
Draw the sky between the branches, the gap between the pinnacles. Your brain has a symbol for a branch; it has none for the gap, so it looks.
Envelope, masses, detail
Enclose the subject in five straight lines. Divide that into big masses. Add detail last, and least. Spend half your time on stage one.
Light on form
Highlight, light, halftone, core shadow, reflected light, cast shadow. Every building is cubes, every tree is spheres. Decide the light first.
Mass
Corot's half: divisions of light, air, trees, water, ground, charcoal, memory.
The three divisions of light
Foreground: the deepest darks and the strongest contrast. Midground: halftones. Distance: pale, close, soft. Each zone has its own quality of light.
Aerial perspective
Air is a veil. With every mile, things get lighter, lower in contrast and softer-edged. Distance is drawn with a lighter pencil, not smaller detail.
The order of values in daylight
Sky lightest. Then flat ground, which faces the sky. Then upright walls. Then undersides and cast shadows. A plane's value depends on how squarely it faces the light.
Building a tree from masses
Silhouette first, then three to five big clumps, then a light side and a shadow side on each clump, then leaf texture at the edges only. Never draw a leaf.
Branch logic
The trunk tapers. Every fork changes direction and thins. Branches dive into the foliage; not one ends in open air. Work from the ground up, the way the tree grew.
Sky holes
A few irregular gaps near the edge of the canopy, shaped like the spaces between fingers, with a branch crossing the largest. Three make a tree breathe; twelve make a sponge.
Texture lives at the edge
The interior of a mass stays flat tone. All the texture goes on its outer edge, broken and varied. The eye assumes the rest.
Water as a mirror
Everything reflects straight down from its base. Vertical strokes. Lights a half-step darker, darks a half-step lighter. Then three horizontal ripples to break it.
The receding ground
Near ground: darker, more texture, more contrast. Far ground: a pale flat wash. A cast shadow glues everything to it. Without one, things float.
Charcoal: the late Corot method
Side of the stick for tone, tip for accents, stump to soften, kneaded eraser to lift the lights. Keep the grain. Fix it when it is done.
The souvenir method
Look for three minutes. Turn away. Draw from memory for ten. Compare for one. Repeat three times. Memory keeps the masses and throws away the clutter.
Line
The draughtsman's half: eye level, perspective, bays, arches, the broken line, tone from line.
Eye level
The horizon is exactly at the height of your eye. Things above it show their undersides; things below show their tops. Draw the eye-level line first, faintly, on every architectural page.
One-point perspective
Looking straight down a street or a nave: every receding edge meets at one vanishing point on the eye level. Verticals stay plumb, cross-lines stay level.
Two-point perspective
A building seen at its corner: each face recedes to its own vanishing point, both on the eye level and usually both off the page. The near corner is the tallest and darkest edge.
Convergence without the vanishing point
Sight the true top and bottom edges. Divide the near and far verticals into the same number of parts. Connect matching marks. You never need the vanishing point itself.
Dividing bays in perspective
Equal in the world means shrinking on the page. Draw the first bay by eye, find its centre with an X, and use the diagonal to find each next bay. Never measure receding bays with a ruler.
An arch in perspective
Head-on, a semicircle in a square. Oblique, half an ellipse in a foreshortened square, apex shifted toward the near side. Draw the square first, then fit the curve.
The broken line
Lift the pencil mid-line. Let it wobble, thicken, vanish and return. A continuous line draws new concrete; a broken line draws old stone.
Tone from line
The etcher's value scale: each layer of hatching crosses the last at a new angle. Paper, one layer, two, three, four. Every shadow is a counted number of layers.
Architecture
Arches, tracery, mouldings, masonry, roofs, windows, ruins, figures, shadows.
Constructing a pointed arch
Equilateral: two arcs, each centred on the opposite springing point, radius equal to the span, meeting at the apex. Lancet if the radius is longer, drop arch if shorter.
The round arch
A semicircle with its centre on the springing line, radius half the span. Voussoirs radiate from the centre; the keystone sits at the top. Draw three joints that point to the centre and the eye believes the rest.
Tracery from circles
A Gothic window is geometry you can rebuild, not lace you must copy. Main arch, central mullion, two sub-arches of half the span, a circle in the spandrel that becomes a quatrefoil.
A moulding in light
A projecting course is four horizontal bands of value: bright top fillet, halftone curve, dark underside, cast shadow on the wall. The darkest line on any building is the underside of a projection.
Masonry coursing
Run the horizontal courses as broken lines. Add vertical joints only near openings, corners and the base. Let tone carry the middle. Hundreds implied, forty drawn.
Roof planes and slates
A roof is a tilted plane: light if it faces the sky. Its rows converge with the building. Draw slates in the nearest two rows only; the rest is tone.
The window as a void
A window is a hole in a thick wall. Show the reveal for depth. The glass is dark with one thin highlight. The sill is light and casts a small shadow.
The ruin's silhouette
One big stable mass with its top bitten off. Some voids show sky, some show dark. Vegetation softens the base. The skyline does the storytelling.
Figures for scale
Two or three small figures, heads on the eye level, and the building has a size. Draw them small and the architecture becomes monumental. They are rulers, not people.
Cast shadows on buildings
Shadows follow the profile of what casts them and step where the wall plane changes. One sun, one angle, everywhere. Two shadows that disagree collapse the building.
Composition
Thumbnails, grouping, focal point, framing, depth, format.
Thumbnails
Three two-inch sketches, three values, no lines, three minutes each. Pick the one with the biggest dark mass and the clearest light shape. Commit.
Grouping values
Link the darks into one shape. Link the lights into one shape. Let a mid value hold them apart. Confetti values read as noise; grouped values read as a picture.
Focal hierarchy
The eye goes where contrast, sharpness and detail coincide. Let that happen in exactly one place. Spend your darkest dark and your whitest white together, once, on purpose.
The framing device
Dark foreground trees on the sides and dark ground below enclose a small, pale, distant view. The eye is funnelled to the distance and stays there.
The depth stack
Five overlapping planes from foreground to sky, each clearly in front of the next, each lighter and softer. Overlap is the strongest depth cue there is.
Format and horizon
Decide what the picture is about. Sky? Horizon low. Ground and buildings? Horizon high. One tall thing? Turn the paper. Never cut the page in half.