your rubber knife and avoiding the
temptation to lean on the pencil to
make one line stand out among
many (common mistake) instead of
taking the time to carefully remove
unwanted lines when necessary and
just leave the (light) ones you want.
It’s also well worth mentioning that
although sometimes the adjustments
you make to your existing sketch will
be big, some of the most important
refinements made in the overall
scheme of things can come down
to being as fine as moving a line or
small part of a line one way or the
other no more than the thickness
of the line itself. Often you have
to “ghost” a line (rub it out almost
completely but still be able to just
see it) so you can carefully replace it
with the subtle changes to its shape
or direction without the original line
being in the way. You will be surprised
how often (sometimes earlier in a
drawing than you’d think) a very fine
adjustment of a particular line or
lines either in their actual position,
angle, or shape will allow you to
move forward on a drawing in danger
of stalling. Sometimes the smallest
of refinements will let you see why
other larger adjustments are required
on a different part of the drawing
altogether. Two good golden rules
to remember are ‘No part of your
drawing is above suspicion’ and
‘there’s no such thing as too small
an adjustment to worry about’.
No matter what your experience
level there is a constant when it
comes to drawing freehand, i.e. The
point in every layout where you know
it’s not right but can’t seem to spot
the specific problem. At this point
you can just keep on drawing and
set the fundamental proportional
errors in concrete and regret it later
(and you will) or learn how to ask
and answer your own questions with
the pencil in your hand and make
the necessary adjustments to your
drawing as you proceed through
every stage from start to finish.
There are lots of ways to “find out
stuff” (proportional and positional
facts) about your composition whether
it’s a reference photo you’re working
from or an “en plein air” (real life)
situation without resorting to cheating
(gridding, measuring, tracing). Before
we go any further I have to make it
clear that you never lay your pencil
directly on the photo or your drawing
paper. You aren’t using your pencil to
measure anything or transfer sizes of
things on the photo onto your drawing
but rather comparing specific aspects
(or sometimes two or more things) on Fig 2: Checking for levelsAny and every
subject and
composition is filled
with different kinds
of optical illusions
which conspire,
sometimes in
combination, to
stop you (and me)
from accurately
representing
the subject...