Kenney Mencher: drawing tutorial

Showing posts with label drawing tutorial. Show all posts

Thursday

Drawing the Skeleton as a Preparation for Life Drawing

Tuesday

Painting Tutorial Video: How to Paint the Basic Shapes in Monochrome.

A 15 minute demonstration and tutorial of how to paint a cone and sphere in black and white oil paint. With a short discussion of the materials, brushes paints as well as a discussion of Caravaggio, chiaroscuro and tenebrism.

More "How to" Articles and Tutorials

Upcoming shows:

Art Museum of Los Gatos, California
Saturday December 3, 2011
5PM-8PM Show up in costume and get into the photobooth! You may end up being my next painting!

January 2012
Santa Clara College, California

February 2012
Ohlone College, Fremont California
Elliott Fouts Gallery, Sacramento California

Wednesday

Demonstration: How to Draw a Cube in Charcoal

This is a tutorial for my drawing and painting students at Ohlone College. (But feel free to use it if you like.)

The sphere is the basis for a lot of shapes that you will have to draw and paint. I have a PDF that you can download of the basic shapes to print out and draw here.

http://www.kenney-mencher.com/basic_shapes_press_high_quality.pdf

I start by using a charcoal pencil and I'm holding the pencil the way Humphrey Bogart in those old movies holds his cigarette.

I start by very lightly sketching a diamond shape. Then I take a compressed charcoal stick and use the side of it to draw the verticals. I'm holding it "Bogart" style and I use the longest edge almost like an ice skate to make the vertical lines that drop down from each corner.

Same use of the compressed charcoal stick to create the diagonal lines. Keep everything as light as possible! You want the lines to disappear as you shade in the planes.

Indicate in the background of the table.

The cast shadow is laid out as a horizontal line that starts from the where the corners meet the table top. One of the corners is hidden behind the body of the cube. The shape of the cast shadow looks a bit like a house that's been put sideways.

Now for the moment of truth! I drew everything freehand so if I put a T square against the paper are my vertical lines really vertical?

Nope! They are not straight up and down so I need to fix that.

All better now. Next I take the piece of compressed charcoal and use it kind of like a big paint brush to mass in the largest shadows and planes.

This is a compressed charcoal stick. This is a quick way to fill in the values so that it will make the drawing happen faster. My teacher Irwin Greenberg use to say that "Big painters use a big brush." I think that the same applies to drawing materials.

It's really important to work background to foreground.

Next comes the cast shadow.

Using the eraser to clean edges and also to smudge and blend.

Applying a tone for the tabletop. I guess I really should have done this earlier.

Using a stump to blend and even the tones.

Using a charcoal pencil to make small hatches and define and modulate the values.

I think that mark making is an important part of drawing. I'm using light lines that are parallel to the sides of the cubes to even the tones and create some texture.

At this point this drawing is a finished version that uses mark making. It's important to think about the direction and frequency of marks. Some artists do not like mark making at all and so they completely blend the tones.

Next, I'll show you how to do this towards the end. Here I use the eraser to start doing this and to straighten things out. At this point I'm kind of just playing around to make it different.

More info at:
http://www.kenney-mencher.com/

More "How to" Articles and Tutorials

The Human Figure

How to draw a portrait

Demonstration: Drawing the Sphere in Charcoal

This is a tutorial for my drawing and painting students at Ohlone College. (But feel free to use it if you like.)

The sphere is the basis for a lot of shapes that you will have to draw and paint. Here's an airbrush diagram of the sphere that you should use to talk about the individual shapes. I have a PDF that you can download of the basic shapes to print out and draw here.

http://www.kenney-mencher.com/basic_shapes_press_high_quality.pdf

I start by using a charcoal pencil and I'm holding the pencil the way Humphrey Bogart in those old movies holds his cigarette.

I draw with really light lines, but still notice how lame my sphere is when I sketch it freehand. (I'm not Giotto!)

The horizontal line off the bottom is designed to give me a line to draw the elliptical shaped shadow.

I put brackets on each end of the horizontal line so that the edges of the ellipse will look better.

Then I connect the arches.

Finish the shape.

A better way! Using a compass to draw the circle!

This is called and ellipse guide. You line it up with the horizontal line that I used as the shadow guide.

See how much nicer drawing guides can make it? I'm still gonna use my freehand drawing though. Just keeping myself honest!

Drawing the back of the table in.

It's really important to work background to foreground.

Shading in the background in big swoops.

Next I move on the the cast shadow.

Using a stump to even the tones out. You don't have to but it sure does help!

A kneaded eraser that you can use to clean up edges. You can even use it to smudge and graduate the transitional tones and shading. I call the "much kneaded eraser."

Adding the middle tones of the sphere.

Now I'm stumped. Time to even some tones out. I also use it on the cast shadow.

Going back to the large piece of compressed charcoal to rework the whole drawing. It's a good idea to think of the drawing as a complete entity and work the whole drawing as much as possible. Think about how one value or shade relates to the others.

Developing the drawing in a bit more depth.

Now I use a smaller charcoal pencil to redefine edges and fix the drawing. I need to make the shape more accurate.

The reflected or ambient light on the sphere is too bright so I'm going to have to dirty it up and reduce its value by stumping and smearing in that area.

Next I go back in with the pencil and do a sort of glazing and medium tones by cross hatching light scribbled or hatched lines across the forms. It's a way of developing value structure and making a series of marks that make the drawing a little richer and more interesting.