Tools and starting out
The tools I use are:
- A Sanford Turquoise Lead Holder with 2B lead
- .5 mechanical pencil with 2B lead
- .3 mechanical pencil with HB lead (anything softer breaks too easily)
- A rubber eraser
- A Sakura mechanical eraser
- Tissue paper for smearing
- Canson bristol board. The size for this particular piece was 7×11 inches.
I start with a sketch, drawing with the .5 mechanical pencil on the bristol board. You can click on any of the images to view a slightly larger version.
Step 1
Using the lead holder, I fill in some rough tones for the background. I don’t concentrate on keeping this very smooth at this stage. In fact, I prefer some irregularities as will be shown later.
Step 2
With a piece of tissue paper, I smear the lead all over the picture. It’s fine if it blurs all the drawn lines of the initial sketch, because this softens the whole drawing out. This makes the image look very fuzzy and out of focus, which is the intent for the distant background elements. This also gives an undercoat of grey to work with, which will give a base from which to pull the whites out and deepen the blacks later on.
Step 3
Just like in step 1, I further fill in some of the values in the foreground elements, and darken the background as well, adding more texture to it. I want to keep the background elements very soft so that they receed from the foreground, and don’t attract too much attention.
Step 4
Again, I blur everything with tissue paper.
Step 5
Now I finally start to fill in a bit of detail. I start with the tree trunk. The tissue paper does not completely smear everything into oblivion, so there are little irregularities of texture already. I start to enhance these by darkening the lines to make tree bark. I lightly swipe some places with tissue to keep things soft.
