Artists & Illustrators - UK (2020-05)

64 Artists&Illustrators

FIGURE DRAWING

Scars and stretchmarks

In a monochrome sketch, scars

and stretchmarks register as

light shapes on a darker

surface. Once you have

established the skin’s tone, use

an eraser to draw lighter areas.

Frecklesand moles

Asdarkinterventions on

a typicallylighter surface,

frecklesandmoles can be

addedlaterby tickling the

paperwitha little tone.

Tattoos

Insteadofinterpretingthetattoo

anddrawingit,treatit asan

abstractarrangementoflight

anddarkshapes.Drawwhatyou

see,notwhatyouthinkyousee.

Wrinkles and creases

Wrinkles and creases create

dark occlusion shadows in the

skin – use lines of varying weight

to suggest their rhythm and

cross-contours to suggest how

the skin puckers either side.

Short hair

Short hair shows the skin below

and it is a personal choice how

you choose to render it. I like to

suggest the texture, dashing in

short hairs to create tone

through textural marks.

Blood vessels

Visible blood vessels create

a subtle, raised shape on

the skin, often presenting

themselves as an adjacent

highlight and shadow.

Ourawarenessofthephysical
sensation of touch feeds into
how we perceive the model in
front of us. Whether conscious
or not, the contact that your
pencil makes with the paper
is analogous of the contact
your eye makes with the
surface of the model’s body.
Likewise, your experience
of having skin yourself will
permeate the studies you make
of another person’s skin. Here
are some approaches you can
take to rendering surface
details on the skin.

Reducedtoa monochromedrawing,
skin varies in tone from very pale grey
to near-black. The tonal values we
see in our model are created by the
combination of the local tone of the
model’s skin (how essentially light or

darkit is),combined with the pattern

of light and shadow that plays across

the form of the body.

Broadly speaking, lighter skin tends

to show shadows most clearly as their

dark shapes contrast with the pale

skin tone; for the same reason,

darker skin tends to show reflected

highlights more clearly. Mid-tone skin

exhibits the most limited contrasts,

showing both highlights and shadows

with a balanced degree of contrast.

SURFACE TEXTURE

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Bringing it all together!

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Lighten skin tends

to show shadows

more clearly

Darker skin tends
to reflect highlights
more clearly

OBSERVATIONS