Watercolor Painting for Dummies (38 page)
Read Watercolor Painting for Dummies Online
Authors: Colette Pitcher
Tags: #Art, #Techniques, #Watercolor Painting, #General
Start with a loosening-up exercise:
1.
Draw a circle.
It doesn’t matter if the circle is neat. It can be a loop with incomplete starts and stops. Scribble till you get a circle from many circular lines defining the shape.
To loosen up, try drawing circles from each joint: wrist, elbow, shoulder. You may have to stand to get far enough away from the paper to use your shoulder.
2.
After you have a circle you like (Figure 8-2a), add the correct shadows, as shown in Figure 8-2b.
Start with the lightest touch and make the light shadow surrounding the highlight. As you move down toward the core shadow, put more pressure on your pencil for a darker mark. You can also lay the pencil on its side to use the widest area for faster coverage. Ease up on the value as you reach the reflected light area. There is a crevice dark where the object touches the surface. The cast shadow has a reflected light bouncing back from the sphere, so even it has some variation in value.
Figure 8-2:
From a circle to a sphere by shading.
Okay, maybe you need a straight line every once in a while. If you want really straight lines, there’s nothing wrong with using a ruler. For now, you don’t need anything so precise. Just make a square — and in case you’ve forgotten, all four sides of a square are the same length — and follow these steps to transform a square into a cube:
1.
Draw a square, then draw a second square about the same size that overlaps the first about half the width beside and half the length above (see Figure 8-3a).
Figure 8-3:
With a little work and some shadows, a square becomes a cube.
2.
Connect the four corners of the two squares by drawing straight lines between them (refer to Figure 8-3b).
You now have a cube.
3.
Start shadowing the cube, making a light, medium, and dark side (refer to Figure 8-3c).
Because you don’t see the back of the cube, you have only three sides to worry about.
The secret to shadowing a cube is to keep in mind that each side is a different value. For the one in Figure 8-3c, rather than erasing the part of the square behind the first square, just make that side the darkest and shade it in dark. Pick the right side for a medium value and leave the top white or light. All you need now is a cast shadow. Because the light is on top and the medium side is to the right, that dictates that the light source is coming from the top and a little right, so the cast shadow is to the left.
The angle of the light and where it originates from dictate where the cast shadow falls. I shined a light on a box. By moving the light, the cast shadow changes shape. In Figure 8-3c, most of the shadow’s edges are parallel to the object’s edges, but some are different. The light sneaks around the edge and makes a new angle at the bottom left corner. The cast shadow contains some light that bounces off the object, so make a graded value from light near the object to darker as the shadow gets farther away from the object. Set up a similar box-and-light experiment to observe light and shadow.
A pyramid is essentially half a cube. It has a square base and a pointed top. It’s easier to draw than a cube because it has fewer sides. To make the transformation:
1.
Draw a triangle (see Figure 8-4a).
2.
Make another triangle, using one of the legs of the first triangle as the longest leg of the second triangle (see Figure 8-4b).
From the top of the first triangle draw a line that angles out a bit to one side and ends higher than the base of the first triangle. Connect that line to the bottom corner of the first triangle with a straight line.
Figure 8-4:
Triangle to pyramid using shadow.
3.
Add your shadowing (see Figure 8-4c).
Only two sides show in a pyramid — a light side and a dark side — as shown in Figure 8-4c. The cast shadow slants away from the dark side.
Another important shape is the cylinder or tube. Cylinder shapes make arms and legs, tree trunks, watering can spouts, chimneys, and oodles of objects you’ll encounter on your painting journey.
To make a cylinder:
1.
Draw two ovals, as shown in Figure 8-5a.
Circles work as well; use whichever one you prefer.
Figure 8-5:
Cylinder shadows.
2.
Connect the ovals with straight lines (see Figure 8-5b).
3.
Add shadows (see Figure 8-5c).
The shadows become lines the length of the tube rather than spots like on the sphere.
In the preceding section you make one view of each of four geometric shapes. One perspective. How do you make more? The rules of
perspective
help you make shapes look correct in space and in relation to each other.
Perspective uses horizon lines and vanishing points. These items are created by you, the artist. The
horizon
is where the sky meets the earth. The
vanishing point
is located on the horizon line and is the point where all horizontal lines
converge.
If you extend the horizontal lines of an object, they meet at one spot on the horizon.
The number of vanishing points corresponds to the number of perspectives. In
one-point perspective,
you have one vanishing point.
Two-point
has two vanishing points, and
three-point
has three vanishing points. One- and two-point perspectives are used most often in art, but I throw in three-point for free just so you know it exists. You may even see a creative application where it will come in handy. I discuss all these points in the next sections.
Vanishing points and their theory can be applied to landscapes as well as still lifes. Even people and wildlife are influenced by perspective. Understanding and being able to use vanishing points makes your drawing in your paintings more believable and realistic. Paper has length and width — two dimensions. You’re trying to get your audience to believe that there is depth or a third dimension — which is always an illusion. You need every trick you can to make this magic happen.
To help you think three-dimensionally even though you’re working on a two-dimensional surface, picture everything you paint as fitting into a cube.
