Still life with orange on monitor. Graphite on paper.

Drawing, the most fundamental of art forms, is at once a simple and direct form of expression encompassing all of the traditional elements used in the creation of art. Form, colour, and composition are the natural structures binding the art of drawing with our use of drawing as a communicative form.

As with the rest of the content on this site these exercises with basic drawing concepts are a springboard for me to work through ideas on drawing. Ultimately, to raise questions about the drawing process, the dialectic of drawing.

To work through the basic drawing concepts described here you will need, at minimum, a number 2 pencil and paper for the first drawing. The second and third drawings will use primary red and primary blue gouache respectively as grounds for drawing with vine charcoal, sanguine, and white chalk. For all three drawings, the exercises, will make use of a simple still life consisting of a spherical object without ornamentation, a surface to place the object, a simple background, and a single light source. I am using an orange for the object, the top of my monitor for the surface plane, and a drawing board for the background. Anything from a simple ball to a round fruit will work as the object.

Starting with paper consider the size of the page. The page is the starting point of a drawing. The height and width of the drawing plane, the vertical or horizontal orientation of the picture plane, and the relationship of the edges to the space between are all elements of the drawings foundation. These founding elements develop the surface and spacitial geometry and directly correlate to the overall composition.

I'll start drawing by ripping out a 9" X 12" page from my sketch pad. Place the paper horizontally folding and creasing the page into a pleasing vertical size. After folding and creasing the edge of the paper tear off the excess including the perforations from the spiral binding. Pull the lower left corner of the page up to the top edge of the page, forming a triangle and making a 45 degree angle from the top left corner, crease the paper. Fold the excess to the right of the triangle over to left and crease the paper. This will create a square in the left of the page. Flatten the paper. Fold the left edge of the page inward halving the square created by folding the excess over the triangle. Measure the distance from the bottom center of the square to the upper right corner of the square. Use this diagonal measurement to measure from the center of the square, right. Fold and crease the paper from the point you just measured vertically and tear off the extra paper. You should now have a piece of paper looking roughly like the figure below. Again, the size of the proportion is up to you and for the exercise you should have something like this.

This is a Golden Rectangle 6 13/16th" X 11 1/16" with the proportion of 1:1.618. The scan is 72% of the actual size of the page. The proportion makes a good compositional construct and I'll use this page as a template for the next three drawings.

Starting with a fresh page, using the template you have just made, copy the proportion and structural guides of the Golden Rectangle. Further develop the compositional structure of the drawing by adding lines to the structural guides of the rectangle. Let the composition speak to you. How does the structure of the Golden Rectangle enhance the subject? Will you remove the lines after you have fleshed in the drawing? Will the residual lines remain as pentimenti?

Take note how the logic of the composition naturally evolves as the proportion of the pictorial plane develops. As you can see the page retains an organic quality as I have sized the page and developed the composition. What are focal points of the composition and how can these help to articulate the subject matter? Play with the inherent logic of the Golden Rectangle. This is but one of the many examples using the compositional device of the Golden Rectangle.

Block in the central elements of the still life. The still life I set up has four primary components. The object, the surface the object rests upon, the background, and the light source. I've started by blocking in the contours of the orange, monitor surface, and background. I have also set up the light source along the diagonal axis of the picture plane as implied by the cast shadow of the orange.

As you begin to block in the objective elements of the still life, pay particular attention to the contour of the sphere, notice the tonal range of value. You will see that the upper lit portion of the sphere will appear lighter as compared to the relative neutrality of the ground. Conversely the lower shadowed portion of the sphere will recede in darker value in comparison to the neutrality of the background. Think of these elements in terms of abstraction. Visual devices that are used to give spatial depth to the picture plane providing both visual clues for the geometry in depth, the extension of the object in space, and visual weight or surface geometry of the drawing.

After positioning the sphere, orange, several times and eliminating portions of the compositional guides you can see how the structure of the Golden Rectangle has established an overall harmony and unity within the composition.

Render the tonal values. Keep in mind the progression of value from light to dark, in this case left to right, as the objects recede away from the light source. Also observe how the light falls around the sphere. Where is the high light? Where does the lit surface of the sphere give away to shadow? Where is the deepest dark of the shadow? How does the surface where the object rests reflect light back onto the object and conversely how does the object reflect light back into the shadow it casts? These are the important elements to keep in mind while rendering the objects within the drawing. These are abstractions or visual devices that inform any drawing be the subject matter as simple as our sphere or as complex as a crowd of on-lookers in a landscape.

The finished drawing.

This exercise will truly force you to articulate the full range of tonal value attainable with a number 2 pencil. A simple, elegant statement. Do the exercise again using H9 though B9 pencils as the complete gradation of graphite values will give you a greater range of value heightening the illusion of object in space. The technique used in this example is a combination of hatching, cross hatching, and the application of even tonal values. The hatching technique not only informs the value of the object but the hatching also describes the form of the object by defining the counter contour.