Teach Yourself Visually Drawing

Prepare to Draw chapter 4

Here is the finished result. The tone has to be workable and
not so dense (heavily rubbed in or dark) that it cannot be
erased easily. You may find that using a pencil and razor knife
enables you to obtain a lighter, more airy tone. Even though it
takes more time, you may prefer the tone it gives you. Using
the graphite powder gives you a darker and denser tone.

Light tone Dark tone

Now you can use a kneaded eraser to test how dense
the tone is on your paper. Erase a small area. It should
be easy to erase the tone so that you can see the white
surface of the paper. If it is difficult to erase, you proba-
bly rubbed the graphite into the paper rather than
smoothing it over the surface.

In this quick sketch, the artist used an eraser to take
away the large shape of the model’s belly. Because the
chest was also being lit, tone was erased in strokes
rather than in shapes. The artist wanted the light to be
a little more subdued on the chest than on the belly.

In the next section, you will learn that using your eraser
to make marks rather than large shapes can add even
more variety of tone to your work.

Figure Study,by J. S. Robinson