Saturday, August 14, 2010

Tools of the Trade, Step 8

Rough sketch

This is a VERY ROUGH sketch. Before I could go any further, I had to see if everything fit on the medium gray-toned 18 x 24 canvas. I loosely sketched this with soft vine charcoal, sight size, fiddled a little more and got it all in. I had to lower the gong and the temple bells about an inch, but that was OK. Right now I am only interested in the larger shapes, the negative shapes, and tangent lines. No details here.


I will be drawing and painting in the sight-size method, see above. I have placed my easel with the 18 x 24 canvas EXACTLY parallel to the set-up. (The distortion you see in the picture is typical camera distortion.) This is by far the easiest and most accurate way to draw and paint. The concept is simple: What is on the canvas must look like what is on the set-up. Measuring and comparing is a breeze.

The long white vertical strip on the right is where I cropped the set-up. All my vertical measuring was done from the left edge of the strip. The horizontal lines all line up...I hold a stick horizontally and make sure the image is the same as in the set-up. For instance, the top of the pitcher and the bottom of the pitcher is the same on both. As I say, it is a breeze.

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