Hello, for this week’s blog, I am going to share a drawing I
just completed for my Father-In-Law, Pat. Around a month ago, he asked if I
could do a drawing with an old truck in a field with a barn in the background.
That is a drawing subject, I have always wanted to try, so I thought this would
be a great time to do it and this is the result.
For this drawing, I wanted to plan it out from beginning to
end so I knew where I was going every step of the way. To start with, I jump on
my computer and looked through images for references. I like to use a website
called www.pixabay.com for researching drawing. This is a royalty free stock
image page that has high resolution images of a very wide range of subjects. In
searching, I located a photo of an old truck in the foreground, and I believe Mt
Rainier in the background (not 100% sure). Over all I like the image as a
reference, however there were some changes to the layout the I wanted to make
for the drawing. To edit the image, I opened it in Photoshop and moved the mountain
from the right center to the left side. Then added a barn in the middle ground towards
the right from a photo I had taken several years ago. Once I was happy with the
rough layout, it was time to put pencil to paper.
For this drawing, I started by rough sketching the truck in
the foreground and the barn in the middle ground. This gave me the reference
and proportions for the remainder of the drawing. Once the rough sketch was completed,
I started with the sky and the background hills and the mountain. For this step,
I took an egg-shaped makeup sponge with some graphite power and gently rubbed
the sky. Spreading an even shade of gray. Then taking a kneadable eraser, I
created the clouds. Next, I took a stick eraser and created the mountain in the
background. To get the look I was going for, I went back and forth several
times between adding graphite power and erasing it to build up the layers of
the sky and clouds. Doing this helped the mountain standout in the background.
Once I was happy with the sky, I moved to the foot hills in
the background. These were added by using an old blending stump that was already
loaded with graphite. I just softly rubbed in the shapes of the hills I wanted
then, using the stick eraser, added more details. Moving down the page, I added
the background trees using an H and 2B pencil, being careful to keep them light
and with little detail. This makes them look like they are far away.
Next, before starting with the truck in the foreground, I
took a fingernail art tool and started indenting thin lines that would represent
grass. To explain this, a fingernail art tool is just a medal tool with a small,
rounded head on it used for adding details when painting fingernails. For
drawing they work well for indenting paper without tearing it. These indents
will not fill up with graphite when drawing so you are left with thin white
lines. It is a faster and easier way to create detail hair or grass without having
to rely as much on negative space drawing. Anyway, I took some time and covered
the entire bottom of the drawing with a lot of random lines created with the
fingernail art tool. The one thing I was careful of was to ensure the lines I
indented in the paper were all going the direction that I wanted the grass to
go. The warning here is once you do this, it is extremely hard to change it, because
this is one step that will damage the drawing surface of the paper.
After getting the indenting of the grass in, I started
drawing in the details of the truck. I found the old metal was easier to draw
than a shinny new vehicle would be. The reason for this was that any inconsistencies
just looked like aged metal. All I really needed to concentrate on was keeping
my pencil strokes going the same direction of the angles of the truck. Also, if
you notice as I drew the bottom of the truck, the grass that I indented into
the paper naturally showed up. All I had to do was add some highlights and a
few more details.
Finally, I moved to doing the barn. As I started with it, I
really did not like the angle of how it was sitting. Originally, I drew the
barn facing straight forward, where you could only see the front. This made it
look flat. I change the angle slightly, so you could also see the right side of
the barn and the roof line. This help give a little dimension to it. When I
finished with the barn, I added the grass in the middle and foreground. Once
that was complete, I thought it was still missing something. I add a tree to
the right side in the mid-ground and this helped give the finished drawing a
little more depth.
I hope everyone enjoyed this drawing. If you have any
question or want additional details on how I tackled a specific step, please
add them in the comments below.
Have a great week.
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