The reductive drawing technique more closely resembles painting than line drawing. As when starting a painting, your first concern is establishing masses of value onto which you apply the smaller forms found in life. This proves to be an easy, flexible, and forgiving method of quickly creating an atmospheric drawing.
Drawing Your Subject When the tone is just laid on the paper, often it is just resting on the surface and is easily removed. You have to be careful initially not to pull away too much tone. It is advisable to lightly map out the placement of your shadow shapes before you start pulling out the lights. To pull out the lights, first wipe away with a tissue (a chamois will pull away too much), then pull out the brighter lights with a kneaded eraser. If you accidentally erase away too much value or if you find you need more halftone, you can work more charcoal powder back into the surface. STAGE O N E : B L O C K I N G I N T H E S H A P E When starting a figure drawing it is useful to determine the gravity line (which is also called a "weight line"). In this case that would be the positioning of the head over the knees. Mark the top of the head and the bottom of the feet (if you are doing a standing figure) along a vertical line on your paper. This will ensure that the figure stays on the page locked into a certain size. For reference, you should also mark the halfway point. This simple proportional notation can help you keep your figure drawings more accurate. Now start to block in the key areas of your figure. Determine the angle of the clavicle, or collarbone, which is easy to see on the surface of the model and is referred to as a bony landmark. The angle of the clavicle provides vital clues to the tip and tilt of the rib cage. The rib cage can be blocked in as an egg shape, or as a series of directional angles. Next, formalize the pelvis and head, making sure that they are aligned in a believable manner. In addition to identifying these anatomical features, at this stage it is important to place in significant angles and repeat them as often as possible. This repetition ensures that the lines used are important ones that impact the gesture of the whole figure. If you are drawing an angle in the neck, look where the line intersects the foot and the head. This
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limits the angle direction, creating unity, and keeps your composition dynamic and fluid. (For more on blocking in the essential shapes of the figure, see chapter eight.) After you have established the gesture, or positioning, of the figure, check the accuracy of the drawing by measuring. Using a narrow knitting needle or skewer, check the vertical alignments, such as how the side of the neck aligns over the leg. Measuring (as discussed in chapter three) is simply the comparison of one part of the drawing to another. Through measuring you can combine intuition with the truth observed in nature and ensure an accurate foundation on which to build the details of the drawing. STAGE TWO:
CAPTURING LIGHT AND
SHADOW
As with any drawing, this next stage moves from line and focuses on shape. It is easier to see the likeness in your drawing and compare it with the subject when using light and dark shapes. This process also helps improve the accuracy of your drawing. As you locate and shade in the shadow shapes, the drawing will take on a lifelike quality. The key element in the shadow shape is the core shadow, that dividing line between the light and shadow. Much descriptive information about the forms on the body is found in this area. Offset the simplification or flatness of the shadow by observing well the small nuances of the core shadow area. STAGE T H R E E : F O C U S I N G O N FORM D R A W I N G The last stage of the figure drawing is to render form. The block in provided a strong foundation by ensuring that you considered each part of the drawing in relation to every other part. Nothing has been seen in isolation and each part relates to the whole. Now you can turn your attention to small forms without worrying that the drawing will lose balance. As discussed in detail in chapter five, the area responsible for volume is the halftones. Start rendering the halftone areas, focusing on one area of the drawing at a time. Turn from dark to light, looking for nuances where one area will flow into another or where forms are clearly delineated from one another. After you have rendered each area of the drawing, you might once again reassess the success of the whole drawing against the original. This is the time to evaluate hard and soft edges, or areas that need to be emphasized or subordinated.
PART FOUR: P U T T I N G T H E O R Y INTO PRACTICE