{"id":7016,"date":"2019-12-26T15:37:49","date_gmt":"2019-12-26T15:37:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.toadhollowstudio.com\/wp_blog\/?p=7016"},"modified":"2023-11-21T17:25:53","modified_gmt":"2023-11-21T17:25:53","slug":"a-shell-study-in-graphite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.toadhollowstudio.com\/wp_blog\/2019\/12\/a-shell-study-in-graphite\/","title":{"rendered":"A Shell Study In Graphite"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Shell<\/a>I always have trouble finding something to draw in the winter months when all the leaves and green things are hiding. A friend of mine suggested that you might have the same trouble, and that we take these months to draw studies of interesting things around the house. I think that\u2019s both an excellent and challenging idea!<\/p>\n

Lighting The Subject
\n<\/strong>One of the most important things to consider when setting up a still life is lighting. A drawing light about a foot away from your subject is probably at the right distance and angle, and should be a good brightness for lighting a small object.<\/p>\n

For this drawing, I just put a sheet of paper on the arm of my chair under my drawing light, then placed my shell on it. I could have drawn from life, but I wasn\u2019t comfortable in that position, so I took a photo on my iPad and used it to draw from. The photo is at the bottom of the page.<\/p>\n

\"Shell<\/a>Form First<\/strong>
\nI used my brush blended technique on this drawing, which means that I brushed each layer of hatching with a small brush to blend it. I used Grafwood pencils on Arches Hotpress Watercolor paper because both complement this technique by helping to create a smooth looking texture.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t intend to draw all the detail on this shell. Adding enough to give the illusion of a complete shell, which will include shadows, highlights, and 30-50% of the details, will be what I aim for.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve discovered that the best way to approach a highly detailed subject is to make sure that the underlying form is well drawn. I did that by averaging the light and dark values and leaving out the extremes. Once that\u2019s done, all the details on the surface can be erased or hatched-in as densely or as sparsely as you like, and the object will look real. I used 2H and HB pencils to lightly hatch the shell, and then brushed the hatching smooth.<\/p>\n

\"Shell<\/a>The Highlights<\/strong>
\nI used a stick eraser (a Mono Zero) and a wedge-shaped rubber eraser (a Kemper Wipeout tool) to remove the main highlights. In a drawing with a lot of detail like this, it\u2019s very easy to erase yourself back to a blank slate if you\u2019re not careful at this stage, so I chose only the major details to erase beforehand and stuck to my plan. I have a tendency to overemphasize the first details of a drawing, so I was careful to keep the lines that I erased the correct widths.<\/p>\n

\"Shell<\/a>The Dark Details<\/strong>
\nUsing 2H and 4h pencils, I added the shadows and thin dark details around the highlights I chose to include in the last step, and a few more in other areas that I knew I wanted to develop later. I was careful to draw these details with the right value, if your details are too dark, they will catch the eye more than they should, making the surface appear mottled.<\/p>\n

I wanted this drawing to be less detailed than a photo, but more detailed than this stage, so I decided to take it through another round of highlighting and dark detailing.<\/p>\n

\"Shell<\/a>Highlights Revisited<\/strong>
\nIn this stage I erased some subtle highlights over the entire shell, but most of the detail could be seen at the bottom, so I concentrated my work there.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

\"v\"<\/a>The light catches the horizontal and vertical lines crisscrossing each other at the bottom of the shell. I thought they conveyed the essence of the shell’s texture, so I spent some time erasing dashes and stripes following the curvature of the shell. Because my erasing wasn\u2019t perfect, however, I spent some time retouching my work with a sharp 4H pencil.<\/p>\n

\"Shell<\/a>Dark Details Revisited<\/strong>
\nThe same crisscross pattern was true for the dark details, so I added a few shadows around the outer edge of the shell but spent most of my time at the bottom of the shell again.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

\"Shell<\/a>I added horizontal and vertical shadows and details with a sharp 4H pencil. I didn\u2019t draw all of them because trying to capture each one just wasn\u2019t feasible or fun, so I chose what attracted my eye most. Once again, I concentrated on keeping my marks the right value and width.<\/p>\n

\"Shell<\/a>Final Round – Highlights and Dark Details Combined<\/strong>
\nBecause I\u2019d concentrated on the bottom of the shell in the last two steps, the rest of the shell was looking neglected by comparison, so I added highlight lines and texture shadows to the top of the drawing.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

\"Shell<\/a>These details were all very light and close in value because this is where the light struck the shell most directly. I used a 4H pencil and the Mono Zero eraser that I\u2019d cut into a fine point to draw and erase vertical lines, dashes, and dots.<\/p>\n

Lastly, I added the smallest and brightest highlights with my electric eraser and then retouched them with a 4H pencil into more correct shapes.<\/p>\n

How do you know when a drawing is done?
\n<\/strong>I like a drawing to have a sculptural sense of \u2018weight\u2019 and all parts need to be equally fleshed out, unless I intend to leave some areas under-drawn. I also have an upside-down test. If the drawing looks alright upside-down, I usually consider it done. How about you? How do you decide when a drawing is done?<\/p>\n

Keep drawing everyone,
\nCarol<\/p>\n

p.s.<\/p>\n

My Sakura eraser came home! It\u2019s being very smug about where it was and what it was doing, but I\u2019m just happy to have it back. I\u2019ve made it a new home in a colorful pouch where it can have all of its eraser nibs with it. Now I think it will be happier and less inclined to go wandering.<\/p>\n

\"Shell<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s hard to get rid of and is considered a weed around here. In fact, the concerned citizens of my town have \u2018suggested\u2019 that I not grow it on our fence anymore. I thought it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Graphite Pencil Drawing Lesson"","block_context":{"text":"Graphite Pencil Drawing Lesson","link":"https:\/\/www.toadhollowstudio.com\/wp_blog\/category\/graphite-pencil-drawing-lesson\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Virginia Creeper, Graphite Pencil, Step Four","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.toadhollowstudio.com\/wp_blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/virginia-creeper11.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7062,"url":"https:\/\/www.toadhollowstudio.com\/wp_blog\/2020\/01\/dried-leaf-study-in-graphite\/","url_meta":{"origin":7016,"position":3},"title":"Dried Leaf Study In Graphite","author":"Carol","date":"2020\/01\/23","format":false,"excerpt":"I found this dried leaf among my knick-knacks and thought it was just as pretty as any man-made object. Unfortunately, no matter how I arranged the lighting, the leaf appeared somewhat flat in all my photos. My challenge was to make the leaf appear as three-dimensional in the drawing as\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Graphite Pencil Drawing Lesson"","block_context":{"text":"Graphite Pencil Drawing Lesson","link":"https:\/\/www.toadhollowstudio.com\/wp_blog\/category\/graphite-pencil-drawing-lesson\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Leaf study 4 Rosinski","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.toadhollowstudio.com\/wp_blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/leaf-4-rosinski-300x188.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2283,"url":"https:\/\/www.toadhollowstudio.com\/wp_blog\/2011\/05\/mindless-imaginary-drawing\/","url_meta":{"origin":7016,"position":4},"title":"Sketch Book Practice – Mindless Drawing","author":"Carol","date":"2011\/05\/18","format":false,"excerpt":"This is the kind of drawing I do in the evening to unwind. I call it mindless because I feel my way through the drawing more than I think about it. Because it's thoughtless, drawing this way reinforces the link between pencil, hand, eye, and mind under the surface as\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Drawing Lesson"","block_context":{"text":"Drawing Lesson","link":"https:\/\/www.toadhollowstudio.com\/wp_blog\/category\/drawing-lesson\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Odd Looking Aloe Vera Plant","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.toadhollowstudio.com\/wp_blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/three-stems006-125x125.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2145,"url":"https:\/\/www.toadhollowstudio.com\/wp_blog\/2011\/04\/organic-form-shading\/","url_meta":{"origin":7016,"position":5},"title":"Sketch Book Exercise – Organic Form With Gradated Hatching","author":"Carol","date":"2011\/04\/25","format":false,"excerpt":"Here\u2019s an exercise that shows you how to draw organic shapes with hatching gradations and your imagination. This technique creates a fissured surface that can be used for rocks or a cracked desert floor at a distance, fungus or reptile scales at close range, and lots of other things that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Drawing Lesson"","block_context":{"text":"Drawing Lesson","link":"https:\/\/www.toadhollowstudio.com\/wp_blog\/category\/drawing-lesson\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Wide and Thin Flat Pencil Tips","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.toadhollowstudio.com\/wp_blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/pencil-tips.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toadhollowstudio.com\/wp_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toadhollowstudio.com\/wp_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toadhollowstudio.com\/wp_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toadhollowstudio.com\/wp_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toadhollowstudio.com\/wp_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7016"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.toadhollowstudio.com\/wp_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7016\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12187,"href":"https:\/\/www.toadhollowstudio.com\/wp_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7016\/revisions\/12187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toadhollowstudio.com\/wp_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toadhollowstudio.com\/wp_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toadhollowstudio.com\/wp_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}