[Canned Gabbiar]

Well, I'm an artist and I've spent a lot of time in Art classes and reading watercolour books. So I know a thing or two. But, I'm not the best at explaining, so bear with me.

First, I'll just make a small comment. "Without rules and order, man cannot have freedom." Forgot who said it. But anyway, the same applies for art. There are rules to follow, but once you know those rules, you can break them. hmm.. contradicted myself. But you know what I mean... I hope.

There are steps to developing a sketch/pencil drawing. I have had two proper art teachers. But they have opposing viewpoints. First, remember to think about your idea carefully. A good way to get the positions of the objects is to draw ovals or other shapes to represent the position. These can be erased or drawn over later. Study the positions. Remember the vanishing point (someone would've said something about it). The further an object gets, the smaller it looks. That applies to everything (unless it's abstract...).

A few techniques with the lead pencil. There are different ways to shade objects. One way is called layering. Start light and build up the layers to create the different tones. Cross-hatching is where you cross lines to create tones. You can use dots to create tones too. Make the dots more densly grouped when you want to create darker tones. Another way is just to continue to draw lines. Move from darkest to lightest and varying the pressure of your strokes. Just remember, work from the darkest area to the lightest.

Ok, well, my sister is bugging me right now. So I'll start talking about water-colour in the next post. Have fun producing artwork.
Until next time!