• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

After you have finished:

In drawing the Courbet portrait, you were bound to be impressed by this work, its subtlety and strength, and how the personality and character of Courbet emerge from the shadows. I’m sure that this exercise has provided you with a taste for the power of light/ shadow drawing. An even greater satisfaction, of course, will come from doing your own self-portrait.

Taking the next step

I’m sure you are aware that we have moved from seeing and drawing every detailed edge, as in Pure Contour Drawing, to precisely seeing and drawing negative space, to seeing exact proportional relationships, to accurately seeing and drawing the large and small shapes of lights and shadows. As you continue to draw after completing these lessons, you will begin to find your own unique style of using these fundamental components. Your personal style may evolve into a rapid, vigorous calligraphy (as in the Morisot Self-Portrait, Figure 10-11), a beautifully pale, delicate style of drawing, or a strong, dense style. Or your style may become more and more precise, as in the Sheeler drawing, Figure 10-12. Remember, you are always searching for your way of seeing and drawing. No matter how your style evolves, however, you will always be using edges, spaces, relationships, and (usually) lights and shadows, and you will depict the thing itself (the gestalt) in your own way.

In this lesson, we are relying on the skills you’ve developed with the first three components to learn the fourth, lights and shadows, so the viewer can correctly see what you have left out. For this process to work, it is helpful to see the exact shapes of lights and shadows as positive and negative shapes, and to correctly see the angles and proportions of lights and shadows.

Fig. 10-12. Charles Sheeler (1883-1965), Feline Felicity, 1934. Conté crayon on white paper. Courtesy of The Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University. Purchase-Louise E. Bettens Fund.

More than the other components, this fourth skill apparently strongly triggers the brain’s ability to envision a complete form from incomplete information. By suggesting a form with light/ shadow shapes, you cause to viewer to see something that is not actually there. And the viewer’s brain apparently always gets it right. If you provide the right clues, your viewers will see marvelous things that you don’t even have to draw! For examples, see the self-portrait by Edward Hopper, Figure 10-13.

The truth is, you can cause yourself to see what is actually not there, and you should strive for this phenomenon. Learning this “trick of the artist” is quite intriguing. As you are drawing, constantly squint you eyes to see if you can yet “see” the form you intend. And when you “see” it—that is, the envisioned image is there—stop! So many times in workshops, watching a beginning student draw, I find myself urgently saying, “Stop! It’s there. You’ve got it. Don’t overwork it!” There is an amusing saying in art circles that every artist needs someone standing right behind with a sledgehammer to let the artist know when the artwork is finished.

Fig. 10-13. Edward Hopper (18821967), Self-Portrait, 1903. Conté crayon on white paper. Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. The artist shadowed the left side of his head in an almost even tone. Yet the viewer “sees” the eye that is bareley suggested.

Crosshatching a lighter shadow

Before we advance to the next drawing, your self-portrait, I want to show you how to “crosshatch.” This is a technical term for creating a variety of tones or values in a drawing by laying down a sort of “carpet” of pencil strokes, often crossing the strokes at angles. Figure 10-14 is an example of a tonal drawing built almost entirely of crosshatches. I’ll also review the proportions of the head in frontal view and in three-quarter view.

In former years, I thought that crosshatching was a natural activity, not requiring teaching. Apparently, this is not the case. The technique must be taught and must be learned.