Dive into Drawings
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About the Author My name is Emma Healy. I graduated from Marist High School in 2012. I attended Moraine Valley Community College for two years and received an Associates in Arts. I am currently a junior transfer student at Saint Xavier University as a graphic design major. This book features art from my first semester at Saint Xavier. It goes through all of the things I learned in my computer graphics and drawing classes. I hope to look back at this book in the future and see many improvements in my art.
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Table of Contents Computer Graphics Work: Line Drawings
4-5
Value Drawings
6-9
Color Drawings
10-15
Infographic
16-21
Drawing One Work: Contour Drawings
22-27
Tonal Drawings
28-35
Gesture Drawings
36-39
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Line Drawings
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s an introduction to the Adobe Illustrator software, we started out by simply drawing lines using a drawing pad and stylus. Although working with a new media can be a little intimidating, having a stylus and drawing pad made it feel like I was getting ready to draw with a pencil on paper. While looking at a wine bottle, I drew lines of various lengths to get the overall form of the wine bottle. The paintbrush tool which is located on the left tool bar was used to draw the lines. There are one- hundred lines that make up the bottle. After the bottles were made, using the brush tools I was able to change the style of the lines. In the brush window there are many different brushes to chooses from. By changing the styles I was able to get different effects. These different effects give the bottle a different feeling to them, while keeping the form of the wine bottle still recognizable.
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Value Drawings C
ontinuing with the idea of line drawings, we made line drawings that start to take into account the value of the object being drawn. The first image shows the simple line drawing of the teapot. The second image shows the object with different values.
Value is the relative
Value is important because it can make a drawing become more three dimensional. For me this was one of the hardest parts. While looking at the object it was difficult to see the many different values of color on the teapot. There was a bright light shining on it and causing many shadows and shading. Translating that into an image was difficult. As I continue to practice working with value my skills will become more refined.
lightness or darkness of a color.
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Plenty of Pots
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his teapot also explores value. The darker values are used on the inside of the teapot to make it look more three dimensional. The two different teapots on the right were more explorations in how to change our pictures to make them more interesting. One teapot is made with watercolors and the other is made with thin lines. Both change the image in different ways. The watercolor image blends the tones in an interesting way that gives the teapot a better three dimensional look than the original. The thin lines gives an interesting negative space that make the teapot look almost like a weaved basket.
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Color Drawings
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s we moved forward in the class, we started to learn about colors. Color is probably one of the most powerful additions to add to artwork. Color can easily change the feeling of a image. Adding color on Illustrator is an easy thing to do. On the right hand side there is a menu called swatches. This is one way to change the color. The swatches menu has colors already made for you ready to be clicked. If you open up colors by double clicking the box on the left menu, you can pick colors from a full spectrum. This has certain advantages because you can change the tone and brightness of a color in that box. To make this picture I used the paintbrush tool on Adobe Illustrator. Equipped with a drawing pad and stylus I drew this illustration of flowers. When drawing these flowers I used the same line drawing principle learned in the earlier weeks of class. I
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liked the way the line drawings give off a very stylized look. It helped me to draw in a different way. Instead of focusing on the outline or contour of the objects, I built the object up through making lines. Also building on other skills we learned in previous weeks, I added as much value as I could to the drawings. The yellow flower has darker shades of yellow to make the petal look realistic. I also used a dark shade of purple for the flowers in the back to show that they are in the back. The overlap also attempts to show some depth. The most important aspect of this picture is the color. This picture uses the complementary colors of yellow and violet to create an image that is nice to look at. The image on the left also uses a complementary color scheme of orange and blue to create the same effect.
The colors on Illustrator can also easily be changed to fit certain color harmonies. By going up to windows and choosing to open the color window, you can open a menu to play with different colors. You can change them manually on a giant color wheel or pick from existing color combinations. This is how I quickly changed the color of the picture on the right to the picture on the left.
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Summer Sun Fun
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his illustration was the next exploration in color. All of the colors in this picture are warm colors. The color wheel can be split into two sections: the warm and the cool colors. This is important when trying to make an image have a certain feeling to them. The original image on the right feels like a warm day at the beach, not only because of the objects usually found at a beach like flip flops, sunglasses, and a hat, but also because of the warm colors used in the illustration. The color variation on the left does not have the warm feeling. For all three of the color drawings we had to keep one color constant throughout. For me, that color was yellow. I used the yellow in this picture as a focal point. The hat stands out because of the red frame I made using the red sunglasses and red flip flops. Different values of yellow were used to try and give the hat three dimensional qualities. However, this could have been expressed with colors that have more contrast. The colors blend together too much because they are too similar. The image
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on the left works better in this aspect. What made this illustration more fun was the fact that many different hues could be used. The other two combinations we used only feature two main hues. In the future I would like to try other color combinations like a triad or monochrome color scheme. There is lots to learn about color harmonies.
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Lovely Lemons
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his illustration was my first attempt at the color drawings. The illustration on the right is what I eventually ended up with after many revisions. Working from this first draft to a revised version was very important in my learning process. I knew when I finished this drawing that it still needed a lot of work.
No work is completely finished because additional changes can always be made.
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The great thing about working in a digital media is that many changes can easily be made to old pieces of work. When working on paper or other types of media not as many risk can be taken because of fear of messing up your only copy. Digitally you can make as many copies as you need and experiment with new things. It is a great way to keep improving yourself. Art is a process that works differently for everyone. I like to keep trying to improve old things. The color scheme on this illustration is an analogous color scheme. That is, colors that are close to each other on the color wheel. On all three of the color drawings, I kept yellow as a featured color because it is one of my favorite colors that I feel is under used. A lemon tree was the perfect image to use to create this illustration. In the first drawing, I had a lot of trouble trying to use shading on the lemons and leaves. The values of yellow that I started with were way too bright. When I tried to add darker and lighter values, they were too similar and ended up making what looks like holes in the lemons. The revision fixes that a little bit. The other problem I had was the negative space. There was way too much white space. By simply changing that to green and adding a few more leaves I was able to make the piece look more balanced. The focus is changed to the lemons. I used
rounded lines in this revision to give it more of a rounded look. This made the image look better than the previous one because the items had better shading as well as a more stylized and unique look.
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Infographic T
he next part of class focused on making an information graphic. Infographics are very popular media these days. They provide an easy and interesting way to consume information. Many different elements need to work together in order to make a good infographic. As you might have guessed by the graphics on the side, I made my infographic about swimming. Thinking about the content of the infographic is the first step in creating it. I have been a swimmer for all of my life, so I knew it was the perfect subject matter. I am also going to hang the finished project at the pool where I work as a lifeguard and swim class instructor. Swimming is one of the best forms of exercise, so I wanted to share the benefits of swimming. I did some research on the topic to get interesting facts, information, and charts that I could use for the content. I like to have a clear idea of the content being presented before I start thinking of different designs.
After coming up with a concept, I started to think about the graphics I needed for the infographic. I knew that I wanted a swimmer to be the focus of the infographic with zoom in features that emphasize different parts of the body. I had this idea because the content I came up with could easily be separated into four categories. This swimmer was made by tracing a picture of Micheal Phelps. I started out by tracing the main outline of Phelps and finding the main features I needed to include like the shadow under the arm. The red swimmer was my first attempt. It looked too simple to be the main graphic on the page, so I added more details. I added a more shadows and water on the swimmer. I also changed the color of his swimsuit and cap to match the color scheme I wanted to use for the infographic.
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Got Graphics?
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he graphics on the side are the other graphics that I made for my infographic. All of these were made using the same tracing method as the swimmer on the previous page. By tracing the image with the pen tool and using the fill and outline to color it, I created graphics that relate to my information. I made a heart and lungs to highlight the cardiopulmonary benefits of swimming, muscles to show the physical benefits, a brain to show the mental benefits, and a ring buoy as decoration. These graphics are used to make the information easier to consume. By simply looking at the infographic, you can get an idea about the information presented in it without reading it. There are some graphics that work with the text and other that are used as decoration. The decorations are still related to the subject, but not used in the same way functionally. When putting together the infographic these graphics were placed onto my illustrator document by going to file and place. You can move the graphics around with the black pointer tool. This tool makes it very easy to rearrange items on your document. Once I had the main graphics placed I could focus on where I wanted the text to fall. The next page will show the completed infographic.
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Benefits of Swimming PHYSICAL
-Works all major muscles in your body
MENTAL
-lowers stress
-Teaches self-discipline and
boosts confidence
Calories burned in a 30 min swim 90-220 cal 150-370 cal 220-550 cal recreational moderate vigorous
-releases endorphins which is
known to make you happier
CARDIOPULMONARY -improves body’s oxygen use and
increases lung function
PERKS -easy on bones and joints -Swimming is a low impact
exercise, meaning there is
little risk for injury
-reduces risk of coronary heart
-Suitable for all ages and abilities
and decreases LDL (bad cholesterol)
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disease
Swi m
-increases HDL (good cholesterol)
Final Infographic
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he completed infographic is a combination of all the things we learned in our computer graphic class. We had to apply the things we learned to make an interesting infographic. At this time we learned a lot about the type tool. By opening the type window there are many options for modifying the type. From this menu you can change the font, size, spacing, bold, italic, alignment, and various other options. By making text boxes you can move the type around easily. You can even set the type to wrap around a path such as a circle, which you can see was used to make the swim near a lifeguard and American Red Cross graphics on the bottom right of my infographic. I knew that changing the font to a font that is a little more interesting is important in making the information more interesting. To change the font, first the font with the style you are looking for needs to be downloaded from a trusted website and downloaded onto the computer. Then you can change that font when you need to as long as the font files are in your master folder. The master folder needs to hold all of the pieces of the final product like the graphics and the fonts. Illustrator needs all the files together to make the final product. When creating the overall design of the infographic, one of the first factor I took into consideration was the colors. I knew that blue was going to be used because of the water that goes with my swimmer, so I decided to use green because it is analogous to blue. I used color for the headings and for important words and phrases in the text. The color of the text is very important. At first, I had black text on the dark blue at the bottom. This made it very hard to read the dark text. The text had to be changed to white so that it can be easily read. I added various small things to add to the overall design. I added a safety line at the top and bottom to add a border to the infographic. I also made the swim near a lifeguard and American Red Cross graphics to put at the bottom to not only quote my sources, but also to add more content to the bottom where it
looked very empty in comparison to the rest of the infographic. The ellipse tool and line segment tool were made to make the zoom in frame. The four categories that I came up with at the beginning of my research came in handy for the layout of the text. I was able to put one category in each corner of the page. It made the inforgraphic feel very balanced. I tried to make a unified design with a constant color scheme and balance of text.
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Contour Drawings
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ontour drawings are a lot like the line drawings that we did in computer graphics. They are just the basic form of an object, or the lines that make up an object. The first half of my drawing class worked a lot on drawing contour drawings because the contours are used as a base and more things are added onto it like tone and color. The drawings on the side are examples of basic contour drawings. Only the important lines of the object are drawn. It is a simple version of the real thing. These drawings were made during the first week of the semester. Each object had to be drawn in two minutes.
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T
his drawing was made on the second day of drawing class. Not having any experience in drawing I was very nervous to draw. Although the form is no where near perfect, I really liked this drawing because of the composition. I thought the way I put my feet looked interesting. I like how one foot leans into the other. It reminds me of a shy kid looking down at his feet. We were told to look at our feet and draw what we saw. I moved my feet around to make it more interesting, but that made it harder to draw.
We had to use a sharpie marker to draw. This was very difficult for me because I could not erase. There was also one more catch: we could not pick our pen up from the paper. This is supposed to help us find the overall form of what we are drawing. It is very similar to the line drawing that we made in computer graphics. Both are to help us find the main form of what we are communicating. The only difference is the medium.
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Contour Still Lives A
s we continued to practice contour drawing, the teacher continued to create more difficult still lives to draw. This still life is a small statue of a man, woman, and child, and a camel in the background. The statue was set up in front of the camel, so I really had to watch my proportions. Also, I had to put the statue in front of the camel. The angle of the objects was one of the hardest things to find in this drawing.
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T
his drawing was an exercise in drawing ellipses. I learned a lot about using reference lines to keep proportions in place. Ellipses are used to give objects a tilted effect. It was challenging to keep the proportions right. Later in the class we learned how to use a pencil or our finger to take the sight size of something. By calculating how big something is in sight size and adjusting the size to fit the paper, you can get good proportions.
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E
ventually, we started to use new materials. This was my first ever time using vine charcoal to draw. We started out by filing the whole paper with charcoal, then used our erasers to bring the objects out. This is called the subtractive method. What is left is the outlines of a roll of paper towels sitting on top of a stool. 26
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his is a drawing of my favorite chair. For this exercise we were supposed to use cross contour lines to help give the object more dimension. This was very challenging for me. I tried to vary the lines in different ways. Some are long, shore, thick, thin, close together, or far apart. 27
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Tonal Drawings T
onal drawings are exactly like the value drawings that I did in my computer graphics class. It is too bad that I did not learn more bout tone when we were drawing the value drawings in computer graphics. I would have been able to make better pictures. Tone is the term that is used when talking about black and white. Value is used more often for the darkness and lightness of a color. The eggs on the side were my first attempts at tone. It was a simple way to learn about tone. It is easy to see the dark and light spots on an egg. The shadow usually casts the darkest tone and the light reflecting on the top is the lightest tone. It is best to use the side of your pencil when shading. Once tone is introduced to a drawing, you can make the drawing look more realistic.
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Trying Tone
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his is an abstract drawing of folds in a piece of fabric. I used vine charcoal, white conte crayon, and compressed charcoal for this drawing. We were told to zoom in on one spot in a piece of fabric and draw all the folds. It was in interesting light that made it hard to draw. I struggled a bit with expressing the tone, but there are parts of the drawing that demonstrate tone.
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sing vine charcoal, charcoal, and white conte crayon I drew this still life of a yoga ball. The lights were very dramatic in this set up and cast a complex shadow. I used my fingers to blend the charcoal together and create an even tone. Blending the colors together helps to create a more smooth and natural look to the drawing.
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Take out the Trash
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his is a drawing of two garbage cans made with charcoal and vine charcoal. To get the white tone, I used the subtractive method. First I blocked in a solid tone with the vine charcoal, then I used an eraser to draw in the white tones. The black tones for the trash bags are the charcoal. Smudging the charcoal with my fingers were a very useful way to blend the tones and make it look better. We went outside one day to find things to draw. These two trash can sitting next to each other looked like an interesting thing to try because of the difference in color of the two garbage cans.
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After School Tea Time
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his is yet another still life drawn with vine charcoal, charcoal and white conte crayon. It is a drawing of a teacup on a plate with a pourer, sugar holder, and teapot in the background. I really enjoyed drawing this picture because I got to set up the still life. I arranged my mother’s good china dishes in what I thought looked nice and shined some light on the side of it. I had the spouts of the teapot and pourer point to the teacup in the middle to give the composition a focal point.
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Gesture Drawing A
t this point in the class we started to draw human figures. We learned how to draw the overall gesture of a person’s pose. In class we had a model pose and we would draw a quick sketch of the pose. A gesture drawing does not have much details and is messy looking. These gesture drawings on the side were all done in thirty seconds. Having a time limit made it difficult to draw the pose. I learned to draw without relying on contours. I used the line of action that runs through a person to help find the movement of the pose.
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n class one day that we were working on gesture drawing, the instructor Mr. Villa decided to pose for us. He sat on one of the drawing horses with a drawing board and posed as someone drawing. I was able to add more detail to this drawing because we were given more time. What helps me when drawing figures is to draw circles for the major parts like the head, thigh, calves, arms, etc.
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Self Portrait
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owards the end of the class we started to work on self portraits. These portraits utilize many of the things we learned in the class. For this drawing we used the grid method to draw. First, we took a picture of ourselves and drew a grid on top of the picture. Then, on the paper we copied the grid to fit the page. By focusing on the details in the box you can work to make the whole picture look very close to the original. This drawing was done in graphite, so blending the tones was more difficult for me. We used a new tool to help with blending called a shading stump.
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You get better at working by working. And if you don’t work, you’re not getting better. Terry Crews
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