Marks
Line + MassLine 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.
A line of uniform thickness is a diagram. A line that varies in weight is a drawing. Weight tells the eye which edge faces the light (thin, even broken), which turns away (thicker), what sits on the ground (heaviest of all, right at the contact), and what is close versus far (near things get the heavier line).
Practise it on a box. Draw the three visible faces with a single weight, then draw the same box again: feather the top lit edges almost to nothing, thicken the edges on the shadow side, and bear down where the box meets the table. The second box has weight and sits down. The first floats.
The architectural draughtsmen use weight to organise a whole building. In a Roberts or a Cotman, the near corner of a tower carries the heaviest line, the sunlit parapet the lightest, and the far walls fade. You can read the light direction from the line weight alone before you see any shading.
From your kit
The whole kit →- 1Grafwood HB and 2B, long points the mark drills live in the middle of the range: dark enough to see, hard enough to control.
- 2Castell 9000 a cheaper pencil is a kinder pencil for a page of repetitive marks; save the Grafwood for the drawings.
- 3Alpha sketchbook the 150 gsm tooth shows spacing honestly.
Visuals
Roberts, Dole, France, n.d.. Graphite and black crayon, on cream wove paper, laid down on tan board.
David Roberts, Dole, France. Follow the outline of the church: heavier on the shadow side and at the base, lighter along the lit edges against the sky.
The Art Institute of Chicago · The Leonora Hall Gurley Memorial Collection
Pitfalls
What
Outlining everything with the same heavy line, then shading inside it.
Why
The outline fights the tone and the form looks like a colouring book.
Fix
Lose the line entirely where a lit edge meets a light background. Let the tone make the edge.