Monday, April 21, 2008

Graphite Realism Tips Part Two : Which pencils to use where..

Mechanical 2H 0.5mm pencil :
- Best grade around for realistic art, can be used to complete 85% of the drawing.
- Can be erased easily [if pressure < medium pressure]
- Its the finest mechanical pencil lead, so can be used to create very fine long hair.
- Is very light, so can be used to make some fine shades on the body.
- Can be used as a very good base for skin, since it creates a smooth base layer when used on skin in either straight line pattern [female faces] or crosshatched pattern [male faces]. Smudging should be followed by tissue paper for female faces after this method. For male faces, you can leave it unsmudged or smudge using a brush, which removes texture out of the paper very lightly. Will discuss smudging in detail later on.
- For making fine black hair base. If you want real fine black hair, create a base layer with this [make fine hair, with hair strokes in a lock of hair following parallel paths]. By base, I mean an initial setup for making fine shining black hair. You can leave some spaces where there's shine but no problem if you make the entire hair base and later erase out some regions using the fine edge of an eraser.
- For making very light details on lips [used in circular pattern for lips, although using circulism using 2H mech pencil can be very tough at first. Use low pressure for circulism.
- For making very fine hair, use this pencil at a 80-90 degree angle to the paper, and apply high pressure, but be careful as if you make a wrong stroke, it will make its permanent impression over the drawing even if you remove it.


Mechanical 2B 0.5mm pencil :
- Very important grade when you are making black hair, deep eyes, gap between teeth and tongue, etc.. If you're making a dark background, its a bad idea to use this, since it becomes very tedious.
- This grade should be avoided to make very fine hair, since its very rough and it will destroy the quality of fineness.

To be continued...

Please Note :
-The above tutorial was written by me by what I understood by experimenting with different stationery and observing many great works and trying to decipher how they've been done. I may use some self-defined terms coz they work for me. If you want to put up these tutorials elsewhere, plz give due credit to me! [:D] and link me to that site.
-My methods of drawing keep on changing, so I will try to write the methods which have consistently given me good results.
-Feedback : Please give me feedback about this and tell me if you are unable to understand anything. I'll clarify.
- Tips are provided "as is" and the author is not responsible for any damages done to your drawing or your methods :D
Thats all. All the best!!

Graphite Realism Tips One : About pencils

Hi!

First of all, there are 2 types of pencil renderings/drawings..
1. Stroked renderings
Stroked renderings have always been taught in art schools and are used for traditional figure drawing. Stroked renderings dont produce realistic results because of the rough nature of the pencils used [rough graphite or charcoal pencils] and smudging is rather less or not used at all. These drawings are done both on rough and smooth textured papers.

2. Stroke-less renderings
Stroke-less renderings are done on smooth papers generally or on skin textured [with adjustable texture] papers [called vellum papers]. In such drawings, smudging is a must and smoother pencils must be used. Hyper-realistic drawings are always strokeless, meaning you cant see clear strokes on the paper in the final outcome.

Choosing graphite pencils for realism can be tricky, since we cannot have any pencils which make rough strokes, since rough strokes can
1. Make the drawing look unrealistic,
2. Spoil the smooth texture of the paper.

So obviously we have to use the smoothest pencils most of the time.
Such smooth pencils can be either some monoliths [monolith = graphite body pencils or woodless pencils] which are very smooth or mechanical pencils.

Very good examples of monolith pencils :
1. Cretacolor monoliths
2. Koh-i-noor woodless pencils

There might be others too, but I've only used this till now..

Mechanical pencils or Clutch pencils come generally in 3 sizes : 0.5mm, 0.7mm, 2mm
The 0.5mm is very good for fine pencil drawings and i recommend it for all realistic drawings.
Grades to use : 2h,hb,2b,4b [very rare in 0.5mm]

Very good examples of mechanical leads :
1. Camlin leads
2. Cretacolor leads

Avoid using Staedler pencils and leads. they're very rough. Although staedler HB lead is great for fine light colored hair but its not that we cannot use the suggested leads in that case.

Next tutorial would be on "Which pencil to use where".


Please Note :
-The above tutorial was written by me by what I understood by experimenting with different stationery and observing many great works and trying to decipher how they've been done. I may use some self-defined terms coz they work for me. If you want to put up these tutorials elsewhere, plz give due credit to me! [:D] and link me to that site.
-My methods of drawing keep on changing, so I will try to write the methods which have consistently given me good results.
-Feedback : Please give me feedback about this and tell me if you are unable to understand anything. I'll clarify.
- Tips are provided "as is" and the author is not responsible for any damages done to your drawing or your methods :D
Thats all. All the best!!

Saturday, April 19, 2008

"Grace".. graphite figure drawing

Grace
n.
1. Seemingly effortless beauty or charm of movement, form, or proportion.

Hey guys its my new graphite portrait.. My first figure drawing...
n a portrait after a 2 month break from graphite.. barely gettng time these days.. hope u like it :)
took almost 15hours. done on bristol smooth

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Digital painting...Katrina Kaif..

Digital painting of the super-gorgeousssss Katrina Kaif..