Lesson 3: Creating Depth
Background Depth
Back grounds are extremely important. Even if you are going to leave the background blank - then - the descision to do this is extremely important.
I am going to show you how to use the background to throw your subject matter forward. View this example.
The drawing was lightly sketched with whisper lines. When the form was sufficiently articulated the background was rendered darker than the subject matter, by a series of hatchings and cross hatchings. This built the back ground surface up making it recede behind the subject matter.This left the flowers blank or perhaps lightly hatched around the edges and standing out in high contrast. They can then be lightly washed over in water colour or built up in a series of cross hatchings in coloured pencil. (Or any other medium you care to come up with.)
So the idea is to
- define your space so that you do know clearly what area your dealing with.
- Build up layers of depth. Building layers up from behind can be extremely important because if you have a look at your vase of flowers - or - of a photo of a vase of flowers you will find that the flowers are in light and the spaces between the flowers are in shadow. If you can't find a way of capturing that effect, they will look "washed out and inauthentic."
- Spend 10 mins a day looking at nature and finding places where the background throws the subject matter in highlight. One example of this is where the horizon meets the sky. If this horizon line is treelined you will find there is a great deal of depth behind tham. Find something really interesting to share and post it in the discussion area for us all to have a look at.
Please read :
A Diary of Learning Drawing Techniques By Gayle M. Bird And here is another excellent example of using the background to highlight the subject matter. Red, White & Blue. Water Colour Sharon Himes.c 2002
