Did a couple of classes in a hurry today:
- Week 2: Dynamic Mark Making / Day 2: The Emotional Line
- Week 2: Dynamic Mark Making / Day 3: Bringing Form to Life
- Week 2: Dynamic Mark Making / Day 4: The Tactile Line
- Week 2: Dynamic Mark Making / Day 5: Atmospherics
Day 2: The Emotional Line
Lines can convey feelings and emotions by being dark or light, broad or thin, jagged or smooth, etc.
When considering how to represent an emotion try to ask yourself questions like:
- what happens in your body?
- what happens to your voice?
- what adjective would you use to descrbe the feeling?
Once you have the answers, think on how you can translate them into line:
- would the line be big or small?
- would this line be light or dark?
- would this line be hard or soft?
There is no single correct answer to these questions.
- the solution doesn’t have to be a single line or mark
- you can use multiple lines and marks for each emotion
Day 3: Bringing Form to Life
Used various types of lines to represent the same subject, a tea cup.
Day 4: The Tactile Line
You can use line to convey the tactile feeling, not only emotions.
Ask yourself these questions:
- what does the subject feel like to the touch?
- is it hard or soft?
- is it heavy or is it light?
- what other adjectives describe the tactile feeling?
- how can I translate these adjectives into lines and marks?
Combine these observations with the techniques from Day 2.
Day 5: Atmospherics
Atmospheric Perspective
Objects that are closer to us:
- appear higher in contrast (darks are darker and lights are lighter)
- appear higher in color saturation (colors are brighter)
- have a higher level of sharp detail (are more in focus)
Conversely, objects that are farther from us:
- appear lower in contrast (become muddy, with similar gray values)
- appear lower in color saturation (colors are washed out)
- have softer edges and less detail
This atmospheric perspective can be usually seen only over great distances.
Value
The relative degree of lightness or darkness of a particular color or subject.
Washing/Grayning
Use the side of the pencil to cover the paper without leaving visible marks of individual strokes, but only an uniform value or value gradation. For darker values, multiple passes, varying slightly directions can be used. For light values or gradations, special care must be taken to get everything right from a single pass.
Practice “washing” often in abstract, without applying it to a subject, so that you have the technique ready when you need it in an actual piece.
Contrived/Invented Atmospheric Perspective
Atmospheric perspective can be used to bring into the attention of the viewer only parts of the drawing, even if the size of the subject doesn’t warant such an effect.
For this, you draw the important part of a subject with more contrast and level of detail, while leaving the less important parts (or parts we don’t want the viewer to focus on) with less contrast and less details.
The technique can be seen in figure drawing, architectural drawing, character design, etc.
