Below is a tool I made out of card stock. I first drew a lot of lines i/2 inch wide on a piece of card stock. Then I graded the shading from the light 4h to the Sharpie ultra fine tip. then I cut the strip away from the rest of the page. And then I punched holes in each section with a hole puncher.

It helps me check to see if my values on my drawing match the values on my source photo.

Oh, anyone is welcome to share tips here.

Thats pretty neat idea .... I will have to try that .. I have never made a shading bar ....and the holes in the graph is just the best idea . thanks !

Very helpful and valuable information......thanks for sharing...


John

Cool shading gauge; going to make one too.

OK, here's mine. This is my "drawing board." I can't leave my drawing stuff out anywhere without it being at risk of toddler damage, and I like to work in different places in the house anyway. So I keep all my pencils and such in a tackle box, and I have this:

[attachmentid=4593]

It's made from a door of a discarded entertainment center; it's laminated composite. It's about 2 foot square. I screwed a narrow strip of wood along the bottom to serve as a "pencil tray"; papers can rest there, too. I use a large binder clip to hold my work at the top. On the right side you can see a kneadable eraser; it's stuck in a hole in the board left behind from removing a lock cylinder.

I can sit in an easy chair or on the couch or wherever. I lean back and rest this thing on my crossed knee. Works for me, anyway.

Thanks for starting this super thread! Your value scale tool is awesome. Thank you for sharing! I'll be watching this thread with great interest for more valuable hints and tips.

Neat idea! It's like a large size clipboard but with extras features.

Hi Bob!

Great idea for a thread!!!!!

And the shading bar is cool - I will make one next days.

Ernest - your idea is cool too. This is sth that I could need very much.

I noticed that mine is fading from handling it. I think I will make another one, scan it, and then print it on card stock before I punch the holes in it. This way the graphite won't rub off and maybe it won't fade as easily.

Couldn't you just spray it with fixative?

The only fixitive I have on hand is Krylon's Kamar spray varnish. It might work on graphite. If it darkens it that would be ok, because it is fading.

I was thinking about making the shading smoother while I had it on file format in PSP.

I just thought of another "Tip". When your soft graphite 4b, 6b, and above, pencils get short take some super glue and glue the flat ends together and you will have a longer pencil sharpened on both ends.

Bob.

wow i really like this thread. some fantastic ideas.
earnest--im like you i draw all over the house and i risk my stuff leaving it out--though i dont have toddlers--i have teenagers. ahhhh--sometimes worse than toddlers. that is a fantastic idea with the board--i am asking hubby right now for one, also i dont know why i never thought of a tackle box. i am so silly sometimes. but really all great ideas.
love the shading gauge too
Lori

Now that this thread has resurfaced, I remember that I had another tip to share.

I still often like to use the grid method to get an initial sketch, which I then transfer onto good paper with graphite "carbon paper." If you do things this way, you can make your grids nice and dark, since you don't need to erase them.

My tip is that you don't even need to make the grids in graphite. I realized a while back that drawing the grid in colored pencil keeps it from obscuring the photo and obscuring your sketch. I like to use red or orange Verithins for this, but I think any color would work fine.

I was thinking about this very thing today. I believe that if the old masters were alive today they would use tracing, psp, scanners, printers, projectors and every means available to get their ideas on canvas. The main thing is to have a work of art in mind and then figure out a way to create that work of art. I think to them it would be the final result that counts most. It's all creativity of the mind of humans I dont think a single one of them would get any pleasure, or ego boost, from doing it the hardest way.

I wonder if anyone thinks it's cheating to take the shortest route to work, or the grocery store, or maybe they prefer walking instead of driving their car?

bob

Woodworkers (among whom I count myself) sometimes endulge in the Roy Underhill vs. Norm Abrams debate. Roy is the fellow from "The Woodwright's Shop". He uses only hand tools. ****, he makes all his tools. He forges things. Everything is held together with dovetails and wooden pegs. He works very hard and his end results are, well, on the crude side, frankly. But man, he's authentic.

Norm, of "The New Yankee Workshop", has a big room full of power tools. He uses screws. He uses weird chemical glues. And he makes lovely furniture (although perhaps not as lovely as the folks who take a bit more time and do more hand finishing.)

Personally I think Roy is glorifying a time that never was -- a time when craftsmen deliberately deprived themselves of modern convenience. It's romantic to think about a time when everything was done by hand, but I don't think for a minute that those folks used only hand tools out of some deep sense of "what's right" -- that's just all they had.

But then again, everybody makes their own judgements. For me, grids are fine, but tracing of any kind (projectors, pantographs) is right out.

Bob, this may sound dumb, but could you demonstrate the grid method? I keep reading about it, but I don't know how to do it. Thanks, Elizabeth

Different artists do grids differently. But many artists use grids to transfer an image from one source to a canvas or drawing surface. I use them mostly to enlarge a small photo and sketch it on a larger canvas when I do oil portraits. It helped me keep the same proportions. Now I prefer measuring points on the photo instead of drawing the grid. It helps me to study the lines and shapes better than the grid method.

Basically you draw evenly spaced vertical and horizonal lines on a picture. then you draw this same spaced lines on another drawing surface. Then you draw the outline of the picture by using the lines of the grid to locate the lines in the source picture.

When I used the grid method for enlarging I measured my source photo. I used tracing paper, because I couldn't draw on the photo. If I did this now I would scan the photo and print a copy of the photo and draw the lines on the printed copy.

Then I divided the photo in three or four rectangles the same ratio as the lines I would use on the canvas. For example I usually used 1:1.25. An 8 x 10 photo and 16 x 20 inch canvas have this ratio. On my canvas I drew four lines four inches wide vertical. Then I drew five lines four inches wide horizonal.

On the 8 x 10 inch tracing paper my lines were four lines two inches apart vertical and five lines 2 inches apart horizonal. When I had my grid on the tracing paper I traced the outline of the face in the photo on the traceing paper. Then I drew a grid on the canvas lightly. The lines of the grid helped me locate the lines on my canvas. This still takes a good eye and skill. I would in no fashion call it unethical or wrong. But this is just my opinion. If someone thinks it's wrong then they shouldn't do it. lol.

I don't have a step by step picture example on file but if you need a step by step illustration I can do one.

bob

Brenda shows how to use grids in a number of her lessons, like Claudette.

Claudette is a very interesting and helpful lesson that shows how to construct a grid. but I don't see any mention of using a reference photo. If you are creating a portrait or drawing from the imagination and not from a reference photo then why is it helpful to use a grid?

The only reason I see to use a grid is to reproduce an accurate composition from a reference photo or to upscale a smaller image to a larger image on another surface and have an accurate copy of the original composition.

bob.

The reference in Claudette is Brenda's drawing itself. Kinda circular, I guess!

This lesson uses a grid on an actual photo.

Yes, this one is very clear. And I like the detail in the dog.

tricks i fought the roughness of my stupid paper with :
-Never blend very dark areas on your sheet, because the blending tools will absorb the graphite you slathered with difficulty and you have to go over the area again. Apart from that I blend very much on rough paper to fill the sinkholes with graphite.
-I think it's already said everywhere, but I want to stress this specially because I never did it:
Begin on the upper left and go down to the bottom right so you don't destroy the finished areas!

Tools i prefer:
-for blending: Q-tips and cotton pads
-clutch pencils are really worth their money!! I treated myself to some of them for my birthday(November) and never want to miss them again! (Faber-Castell TK 9400)
-Blu-Tack as an alternative to kneating erasers. It's not that soft and keeps its form much better.
- my hand-held vacuum cleaner for one thing for cleaning my working place, for another thing to clean my drawings of graphit powder.(after colouring very dark areas)
-a circle template-very useful and not very expensive.
-hand-knitted cloves with free fingers to safe my drawings from adipose tissue

This is great... Thank you for the very usefull tips. I will keep my eye open here for more tips.

For blending I use a pastel blending brush, stumps,chamios. They are all great blenders.

I just wish I could find where to buy lose graphite... would save a lot of time with the emeryboard and pencil.

Bob ... I made a 1 - 10 scale shade bar.. I didn't think to punch holes in it...great idea. What I did was make up larger squares.. Light..Medium..Dark and punched a whole in the middle of them.

This is a really great way to learn from each other. Thank you Bobby for starting this thread.

Dors

Dor,

I am a graphite powder girl, and I have never bought it in my life.

I mostly use cloths impregnated with graphite to lay it in - I have one that looks like it belongs to a chimney sweep, one that is a medium grey and a newish one with little colour. That way I can control the depth that I get. I use a piece of 180 or 240 grade sandpaper and a no wood 9B graphite stick. I have the sanpaper in a shallow plastic container. The dust collects in there and the graphite stick gets sharpened to a useful point. I pick up the graphite dust on my cloths, and I can run a stub over the sandpaper and pick up graphite. The stub loaded with graphite is what I use to draw in my subject - you can draw so lightly with it, its easy to erase, and you never press so hard as to leave those pesky indentations.

I mostly use this method when I am working large (about 1/2 watercolour sheet size) and I put the depth in very slowly and erase with a plastic eraser that I keep cutting back to a clean edge for sharp lines and kneadable eraser to soften depth or for creating a lost edge. I use pencils for sharp lines and eye detail etc.

Here are a couple of mine done like that in case your interested :

[attachmentid=8052] [attachmentid=8053]


Sue

Bob I made a 1 - 10 scale shade bar good idea thanks for the tip .

Bobby

Thank you Sue
I have lots of woodless graphite sticks... I will certailnly try that... Sue you mention stub...Maybe a silly question but is that a blending stump or something different. ? Smiling at the chimney sweep... one of my chamios looks a lot like that.
Thank you for your help, and showing some of your work. your work is beautiful
Dors

Thanks Dors,

you'd never guess my favourite subject

Yes a stub is a blending stump - I don't know if its an Aussie thing or a local Queensland thing but we all seem to call them stubs around here.

Sue