Drawing and Sketching

 Drawing is a form of visual art in which a person uses various drawing instruments to mark paper or another two-dimensional medium. Instruments include graphite pencils, pen, and ink, various kinds of paints, inked brushes, colored pencils, crayons, charcoal, chalk, pastels, various kinds of erasers, markers, styluses, and various metals (such as silverpoint). 

    The wide availability of drawing instruments makes drawing one of the most common artistic activities. A quick, freehand drawing, usually not intended as a finished work, is sometimes called a sketch. 

Sketch:

A sketch is a freehand drawing that is not usually intended to be finished work. Sketching can be done not only with graphite pencil, or charcoal, it can be done by brush with mediums like watercolors, oil painting, etc. Sketching can serve many purposes such as

• it might record what an artist sees or 
• it might be recording an idea for later use or
•  it might be a quick way of graphical demonstration.

The sketchbooks of some individual artists have become very well known, including those of Leonardo da Vinci and Edgar Degas which have become art objects in their own right, with many pages showing finished studies as well as sketches.

Artist Tip: Carry a sketchbook of your own. Sketch at least five sketches per day. Make it a hobby and it will improve your drawing and artistic skills.

How to Use Oil Pastels?

     To use any kind of art medium it is very important to understand the medium. Oil Pastels are easy to use but at the same time it is important to understand the behavior of the pastel stick you are using. There are different manufacturers in the markets producing Oil Pastels. Each manufacturer has their own set of binding agents and pigments to make the pastel sticks. The behavior of  each oil pastel varies depends on the manufacturer and life time of the pastel. The names of the pastel stick for same hue differs from each manufacturer. 

So it is advisable to use basic set of pastels(like 25 shades) from any manufacturer rather than buying bigger sets. Before using the pastel in your work, use the pastel on the any rough paper and check the behavior of the pastel. It is very important to understand how the particular pastel stick is blending with the other hue pastels. Some pastels may be harder than others . 

Oil Pastels basics:

    There are so many techniques artists follow to use and blend Oil Pastels. Here are the techniques I follow from my own Experience. 

Plain Patch :

    Learning to create a plain patch is must in any medium. Plain Patch means coloring or shading with same tone all over a respective area. Creating a plain patch is easy but needs practice.  

                                                

                                                

Fig:1 Plain Patch

How to create Plain Patch with Oil Pastels?

   

    While creating any kind of art work with oil pastels, the basic thing we need to do is to make a plain patch. It is the first layer of color you apply on the paper. The layers can be added and blended according to the artwork. 

    Hold your oil pastel stick firmly without any pressure. Slowly color the area in one direction. As I am a right handy, I follow left to right. Do not overdo any area. If there are any dark patches you cannot overwrite it., the only way to correct is to make the area next to it as dark as the patch. Your final patch may look darker than you expected. So you need to be careful and apply even pressure all over the area.

    You can see the texture of the paper while shading . The surface texture of the paper is commonly referred as "Tooth". Due to the "Tooth" of the paper you can see white space in between. This kind of shading leads to a Plain Patch as shown in fig.1

Gradient effect with oil pastel:

    Gradient effect is an interesting and most used element in most of the oil pastel works. A gradient patch is created using either light to dark or dark to light tones. A gradient patch can be of same color or different colors. Lets see the methods to create the gradient patch.

Layering with same hue:

    In this technique, we use only one hue to create gradient. Layering with same hue make the tone look more dense and dark. We use this property to make gradient patch. 

                                                            

Fig 2: Gradient with same hue

     After doing first layer of plain patch, make the second layer of plain patch over the first layer till 3/4rth area of the first layer. Now make the third layer on top of the second layer leaving some gap on the 2nd layer from the bottom . Repeat this process for the required number of layers. After making all the layers, blend the layers with a cotton bud from bottom to top. You can see Gradient effect of dark to light tones from top to bottom as shown in the figure above.

    Here I used only one pastel (Light blue) for the overall effect. As there are many layers of light blue applied on the top, the top of the gradient look more dense and dark compared to the bottom. The darkness of the gradient is limited while using same hue( here light blue). To achieve more darkness, we need to use different tones of same color . Let us see how we can achieve more darkness in the gradient patch using different tones of same color .

Layering with different tones of same color:

    

        Making a gradient by layering with different tones is the best way of making gradient. Here we use tones from very dark to very light. Let us see how we can achieve this effect.

                                                                

    The first layer of the gradient is always the light tone (which is light blue here). Second layer is mid tone( cerulean blue) , third layer is dark tone (Antwerp Blue) and the fourth layer is Very dark tone (Prussian Blue) . 

Seascape Painting in watercolours

 

Though I work in all mediums , watercolors is definitely one of my favorites. The Seascape above is one of my practice works. I experiment on different color schemes. Some color schemes can be derived but some nature provides. Nature gives us plenty of color schemes, the painting above is one of a kind.

    Let's get in to the painting...

    For any watercolor painting, sketching is very much important. keep these things noted, while you do the sketch for your painting:

• Make sure not to over sketch. For example, in the above painting all I need to sketch is the land, house, and tree trunk. You no need to sketch the outline for shadow or leaves as shown in the picture below.
• Pick one baseline for the entire sketch. Always pick one base point as a baseline for your entire sketching. Based on the baseline align the remaining objects or lines in your sketch.

    Colouring

    For any watercolor landscape , we always start with the background wash. 

    

Base Wash : 

    Here I am starting with diluted cobalt blue as base wash for the sky and water portions. when the base wash is still wet, I keep on adding Prussian blue for the dark shades on the sky portion. The water itself does the work here leaving the beautiful effect on sky. 

    This is a far view scene. The land and tree should look dark without more details. I choose the land portion to be muddy so added mix of Burnt sienna and Raw Umber for the ground , tree trunk and house portions. Added a bit of sap green to the tree base and house roof to get fungal effect. 

Adding subject form:

    The main subject here is the tree and the house near to it. The tree leaves should be prominent. I used Sap Green and Viridian hue for the leaves. Apply leaves with Sap Green first as light tone and Viridian hue as mid tone over Sap Green. Add Burnt sienna for bottom leaf branches . The Burnt sienna mix with the green leave a translucent brownish green which represents the dark tones on the leaves. 

    Added details on the house using Raw umber on the house roof. For the very dark tone on the window, I used black along with raw umber. The same dark tone is used for the fence and the details on the land. Do not add too many details on the land as the complete land portion may become dark.

Adding shadows:

    Adding shadows is an interesting part for me always. While adding shadows, we need to give random strokes. Though the strokes are random, we need to plan the colors and position of the strokes. 

    Here I used  Viridian hue , Sap green and Burnt sienna for the shadows. The greens should be placed according to the perspective. The browns in the shadows represents the reflection of the tree trunk and the house. 

Finishing's:

    I added few birds and a little boat in the water. 

    Take care that all the subjects look natural and has full form.

Qulling basics and quilling tips(pdf)

Quilling or paper filigree is an art form that involves the use of strips of paper that are rolled, shaped, and glued together to create decorative designs. The paper is rolled, looped, curled, twisted, and otherwise manipulated to create shapes which make up designs to decorate greetings cards, pictures, boxes, eggs, and to make models, jewelry, mobiles, etc. Quilling starts with rolling a strip of paper into a coil and then pinching the coil into shapes that can be glued together. There are advanced techniques and different sized paper that is used to create 3D miniatures, abstract art, and quilled flowers among many things.

Refer to the below link to get into the details of quilling and to learn the basics of quilling. Try it and bring your creativity alive.

http://theartofquilling.com/QuillingwithConfidence.pdf