Drawing - how much, how little? AND A Smiley Spot

A Smiley Spot

Back at last and I thought it would be interesting to reply to Sophie's comments on my last blog in detail.

She mentions using a softer pencil trying to achieve a darker drawing. Certainly a soft lead will enable a darker line to be made - a darker, softer line. The harder the pencil, the sharper and lighter the resulting marks will be. From my own experience, I would never try and draw with an 'h' pencil as I find them far too hard. Like Sophie, I also tend not to press very firmly when I draw and I don't get on with 'h' pencils. I have found the drawback with the soft 'b' leads is that they tend to be messy although it's possible to lay in some lovely shading effects with them. Since I draw - other than as a preliminary to a painting - very little now, I use my trusty 'hb' pencil. I find this just right, not too hard and not too soft. It is soft enough to be responsive and yet hard enough not to be messy. It is easy to erase and for my purposes, just perfect!

I would suggest that if you are keen on drawing, you should go to your local art shop and buy a box of pencils of varying hardnesses. Buy a nice sketch pad as well and then, as I am always saying, practice, practice, practice! Art is such an invididual thing that what one artists swears by, another cannot abide.

However, one thing I can say is that drawing in order to achieve a pencilled finished piece of artwork is very different to the drawing required as a guide for a painting. I hope you can see from the photo in my previous blog 'Talking About Drawing' (not a brilliant photo I'm afraid) that the drawing is really just an outline of the major points to help me when I start the painting. It is also drawn lightly as I don't really want it seen in the finished painting. You certainly don't want to be trying to paint over a mass of pencil lines; for a start your watercolour paint would just skim over the surface and not be absorbed.

So Sophie, and anyone else who is thinking about painting, when you make your preliminary drawing, don't try and put in too much detail - let your paints do this. If you do decide to use soft 'b' leads, be aware that they smudge very easily and will spoil the white surface of your watercolour paper.

As an aside, the 'h' and 'b' sizes given are the English sizes - I'm afraid I don't know if they are the same in the US or elsewhere.

The painting I have included today is one of a small number of my paintings which are now available as prints and greetings cards. This is the first time any of my paintings have ever been available other than as originals and I am planning a selection of Christmas cards which I will be making available shortly.

I think the oil painting above would make a perfect picture to hang in a bedroom with the smiley red face making waking a little easier! As I said, this is also available as a greetings card and although it doesn't have any message on the inside - as I thought this would make it more versatile - I think it would make a smashing 'get well card'.

Let me know what you think!

Talking about drawing

Now that you have your paper and paints and have practised a bit, you will probably want to paint a picture and in all probability, you will want to make a drawing on your paper before you start - unless you are a very free-spirited painter! How do you erase any mistakes you make? - you don't!

One big problem with watercolour paper is that the surface is delicate. This means that if you start erasing your pencil marks, you will damage your paper and when you paint over the area, it will leave an unsightly mark where the paint reveals the scrubbed surface. You might try the kneadable putty eraser rather than the normal type of rubber (whoops, sorry I think that's rather rude for my US friends!) - I mean of course eraser. I can't get on with this type of eraser myself as I find it leaves a slightly greasy surface to the paper so just use a small, soft rubber eraser. Why not get a piece of pre-soaked paper (make sure to use a piece pre-soaked as it's surface is more delicate then and will give you an accurate result) and try varying degress of pencil pressure and then erase them (I keep having to change my wording to 'erase' with this piece!!) When you then paint over these areas you will see how much you can get away with. You will be all right with very light pencilling. However, after much trial and error, I now draw onto tracing paper instead and then just transfer this to the paper as I had too many sheets of paper wasted when I drew straight on to the paper. Now I can erase my pencil marks to my heart's content!

Watercolour painting entails a lot of control - even in apparently free-flowing pieces, so all the practising you do now will really pay dividends. You will have a lot more confidence when you feel even just a little bit in control of those beautiful watery colours. If you have practised you will already have made some discoveries - that watercolour dries lighter than when you apply it, for instance, unlike acrylics which dry darker. You will probably have found that when you start to mix more than two or three colours together you always end up with mud! One of the challenges of watercolour is to retain its vibrancy - particularly difficult in paintings like mine which are made up of many layers, as of course the natural tendency for the paint when overlaid with another layer of paint, is for the two lots to dissolve together and it is very easy when layering watercolour to end up with an opaque, muddy mess, but don't worry, with a little help, you will soon be producing paintings you are proud of.

The pictures I am including today were originally intended to be for my website but I forgot to keep taking photos as I went along!! The 4 photos show a) the pencil drawing (I hope you will able to make this out), b) a few washes in c) more work on the eyes d) the finished article. For those who wondered, he is a lurcher - a really lovely friendly boy I had the pleasure to meet when his owners came to pick up the painting.