Chapter Eight - Day Eight and Nine: Identifying and Rendering textures

Ok so finally I have had a chance to get back to my drawing book, by resorting to getting up at 5:30 in the morning and drawing for an hour, it seems to be the only time I now have. But I don’t mind the book did say I would have to make an effort.

So on to chapter 8. This chapter took me two days to complete, texture as a subject is pretty detailed but as a drawing... I will let you be the judge of that once you start.   The book covers topics like textures verse patterns, identifying your textures i.e rough, smooth, shiny etc. For Instance to help in creating a wet effect, like a cats eye, you would use pronounced highlights, same goes for shiny objets whereas dull or matte objects would have no highlights.

For each texture there is a different shading technique; Hatching is used for hair or furs, calm bodies of water, jagged rocks and mountains, bark on tress and wood.  Crosshatching is for smooth matte surfaces, woven and shiny fabrics, glistening surfaces, flower petals, polished stones and smooth rocks, human skin and shiny metal. Squirkles (as mentioned before is a cross between a squiggle and a circle) are for furry fabrics, curly hair, masses of leaves on trees (never saw that one coming) as well as ground foliage, bushes or beard stubble on a man’s face. These are merely suggestions though, you are encouraged to find techniques that best suit you and your style.  I have posted some pictures below so you can see the effect of the different sketching techniques in action.

Next it’s on to planning your textured drawing. Use both vision and knowledge and if you can your sense of touch to identify with your subject. Once that’s out the way, look for lines, examine highlights and shadows and lastly look for shapes and forms created by light and dark values. So now that those points are fresh in your mind we move onto the first exercise. Take any object, a basic one though, map out the highlights and dark or light values.  Now start with shading your light values first and then your dark values (that might explain a little, think I started with my mediums first) and just practice drawing the texture of your object.

Next, we move on to project 8: Two Fun Textures - The project is divided into two parts.  Part One: Sketching with Squirkles.  Draw your box, and start squirkling, creating an effect that goes from light to dark. Simply enough...

Now for Part 2: Drawing furry spots. Using your HB pencil, draw your box and mark out where your spots are going to go. Now with your 2H pencil drawing hatching lines in all the areas where there aren’t spots, then using your 2B, 4B or 6B draw hatching lines in the spotted areas. Graduating your shading from light to dark - left to right and bam -  Textures made easy!

After this though I am afraid the fun might stop a little, Chapter Nine concentrates on perspective!
We will have to see how this one goes.

(Please note: that photo examples are taken from "Drawing for Dummies by Brenda Hoddinott'' and the  above views are not representative of her and are purely based on a 3rd party view being Me! All snippets taken directly from the book are stated as been so)