Notan sketch of St. Peter and Paul Church

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

 Hi all. 

I am attaching a 20-minute notan sketch of St.Peter and Paul's Condominium.  I used the viewfinder and a 6b pencil. Please squint and  notice how I tried to balance the black and white.  I also tried to connect the darks and the whites so the eye can flow without jumping.  I would like to point out a couple of other things about this sketch.  First, please notice the lead-in lines in the foreground.  This is important.  Budding artists many times forget to lead the eye into the picture gracefully.  They plop the tree,building, house, boat or whatever right in the middle of the page and expect the viewer to leap into the picture. When you are looking through your viewfinder please notice what is in the bottom of the view.  If possible use a road, river, some line even if you have to invent it to lead the eye in.  Also, please notice the incidental figures I used to add scale.  I will show you how to add these little people next class.  Notice the lack of detail in this sketch. You can put in as much detail as you feel you need in the painting stage but for preliminary sketches you will only bog yourself down and lose your energy to paint the scene.  Lastly, this sketch is about twice the size as I would normally do.  A postcard (5x7) is plenty big to capture the shapes and tones necessary.  This was twenty minutes well spent outside on a beautiful day.  Enjoy.

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Attached Files   

St. Peter and Paul's Condominiums.jpg

BobbyFarrell

Jun 03, 2009

554 KB