Thick & Thin
I love to play around with the thickness (and thinness) of pen lines. I like to see how changing the pen line thickness within the same drawing adds a sense of depth or highlights the main subject or….
It’s totally fun! Try this: Choose a thick line pen (I like a size 08 fineliner) for your main subject OR for the objects that are in the foreground. Then choose a much smaller pen thickness (I use 01 fineliner, or 03) for all the stuff that surrounds your main subject, or for the items in the background.
THEN…switch it up! Reverse that order and choose a tiny fineliner (01) for the main subject and the thicker pen (08) for the rest of it, or the background stuff. Either way, you get this cool way of indicating depth and focus…ALL WITH LINE!!!! Whheeeeee!!!!!!
P.S. Oh wait…is this a mini-lesson? Nah. Just a tip to try. You might like it!
P.P.S. Oh, and this is more work play from the drawing group that meets at Barnhill’s Bookstore. Too fun!
P.P.P.S. Tune in Friday for Drawing Your Life Mini Lesson #4!!! More stuff to fuel the fire for drawing. I hope.:)
Try This…
Before going on a trip, say to the beach with your daughter for her 16th birthday, or to Asheville for a weekend getaway, or just to errands around town, try this!
Paint with watercolor on your sketchbook papers BEFORE HAND. Have no thought as to what you’ll eventually draw there. Just use colors you love, smoosh them around on the page, splatter them, use a bit of white gouache if you want and let dry. Take your sketchbook and just a drawing implement (pen or pencil, marker, what-have-you) or two. Then, when the notion strikes, draw ON TOP OF what you painted. You’ll love how the abstracty painting underneath works in with your drawing without you even having to make that happen! It’s SO COOL! Then, when you get home, you can deepen the colors a bit in places, or add a few more splashes here and there, or not.
Both of these were done in this manner. And on this page here. Pretty neato, huh?
**Nearing the end of my Handbook Journal, begun a loong time ago.
***Come to my workshop on the 3rd of March and I’ll show you how to do this, plus many other ideas for celebrating your life visually in a journal!
