The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain - Betty Edwards [111]
Before you begin, please read all of the instructions.
1. Find a model or a suitable subject. Arrange a light so that the background is illuminated, providing a pale negative space behind your model’s head.
Surrealist artists were fascinated by psychological meanings of colors. Oddly, each hue has both a positive and negative connotation in most cultures. For example, consider the following:
White: innocence and ghostliness
Black: restful strength and depression
Yellow: nobility and treason
Red: ardent love and sin
Blue: truth and despondency
Purple: dignity and grief
Green: growth and jealousy
To correct a mistake in pastel, begin by brushing off the wrong marks with a paintbrush. Then use a kneaded eraser (a soft malleable eraser available in craft or art supply stores) to “lift” or blot the color without rubbing. You can even scrape the paper carefully with a small knife, then blot again and draw in your corrections.
2. Choose a piece of pastel paper in any soft color. Pastel paper has a sharp “tooth” to grasp and hold the dry pigment. Redon used a soft gray-blue paper.
3. Choose a medium-dark pastel crayon for the line drawing of the head. Choose three harmonizing light pastels for the light negative space behind the head.
4. Pose your model and draw the head in semi-profile—that is, with the model turned very slightly off true profile view.
5. Calling on your five basic drawing skills, draw the head using the dark pastel you have chosen. (Redon used a sepia pastel, a dulled violet.) Using your imagination, or using objects in the room, complete your composition by adding objects or parts of objects. (Redon added part of a clock—a recurrent Surrealist symbol—and a falling lizard.)
6. Using your three pale pastels, work up the negative space surrounding the head. Use crosshatching rather than filling the area solidly, so that light and air are retained in your drawing.
A special point: Look at your three pale pastels and decide which is the darkest (lowest) in value, which is in the middle, and which is the lightest. Then use the lowest-value chalk for the first layer of hatches, the middle for the next, and the lightest for the last and final layer of hatches. This sequencing of colors from dark first to light last is the sequencing required for most painting mediums (with the exception of watercolor, which is usually worked from light first to dark last). In working with pastels, the dark-to-light sequencing helps to keep your colors clear and fresh. Reversing this sequence can result in muddy color. This point will help you to see why practice with pastels eases the transition to painting.
7. Complete your drawing with bold colors of your choice. You may prefer to harmonize your color by staying with complements or analogous hues, or you may prefer discordant hues that are anchored in the composition by repeating or echoing areas of each color. (In Redon’s drawing, you will notice that each of the intense hues is echoed in one or more additional small areas.)
Start your drawing now. You will need about an hour and perhaps a bit more to complete the drawing. Be sure to give your model a rest at midpoint in the hour! Try to work without interruption, and ask your model not to converse with you while you are drawing. Your R-mode needs to be completely free of distraction.
When you have finished: Pin up your drawing, stand back, and regard your work. Check the balance of the color. Then turn your drawing upside down and check the color again. If any hue seems to pop out of the composition, somehow not locked into the color arrangement, some slight adjustment needs to be made. The color may need to be repeated somewhere, or it may need darkening, lightening, or dulling (by lightly hatching a bit of the complement over the hue). Have faith in your judgment and in your R-mode ability to perceive coherence—and incoherence. When the color is right, you will know it!
Summing up
In this book,