sketch tutorial part 2

So the next little sketch we will look at is grass. As you can see I did a quick freehand doodle around the edge of my paper. Don't be afraid to add little freehand touches to your work. Most people are just scared that it won't turn out. Practice on little pieces of paper till you are comfortable with adding frames to your image. All it involves is straight lines, wiggly lines and swirls and curls.
Back to the grass. My grass is simply made my using sharp upward and downward strokes of the pencil. I make my angles and the heights fairly random as you would find in real grass. Don't be worried if it does not look much like grass. Most things don't really come together until you add the color or shading.

I start by adding in my light color first, covering the whole area.
Next comes the middle shade of green. I use the same sharp upward strokes to keep that spiky end. I don't cover all my light, I leave sections free.

Next my darkest green goes on. I put the least of this shade. I also start filling in the bottom area very randomly. Brisk strokes are my preferred method for coloring with the Pitt marker.
Lastly, I might add sharp upward strokes to suggest random wayward blades of grass.

Tree:

The next image I will demonstrate is a simple tree, using only basic shapes. By using my drafting template circles, I create a simple tree using circles which are gradually getting smaller as they move up.

Once my three circles are done ( you can see that they are partially cut off, I am ready to add a rectangle trunk.

Last comes the shading which will be done in most cases with color. Start with the darkest in the shadow, and work your way into the lightest. Follow the curvature, think about which direction your light is coming from, think about where shadows will be cast. In this case I could add a shadow of the tree going from the base of the trunk out to the left. Since my light is coming down from the right hand side, my stronger shadow will be on the left.

TOPIARY:

For this simple topiary, I start out with a plain circle.

next from the centre I draw to straight lines and then a little pot at the base which would have started out as a square. Angles would be drawn from the top corners of the square down to the point that you want it to angle at.
I add a simple lip to the pot, making sure that it pushes out further from the main body of the pot. I also take my pen and follow the circle around using jerky lines. The leaves are not perfectly smooth so there is no reason for my topiary to be smooth.
Next I add little flowers ( circle centre, half circles around ), and leaves ( teardrop ).
I pen over my whole image, erase my pencil, dot and crosshatch some shadow, and then begin to color it in using dark on the left and light on the right ( light source coming from right hand side).

Again with the finish, I add dark on my shadow side and light on my light side. I also add shadow to the underside of my lip ( of pot ) because it would be casting a shadow.

I really hope this helps a little. It's not easy to translate some things into this format of tutorial. I am hoping within a year to get a digital camcorder so that I can actually do video tutorials which I think will be so much easier. Please let me know if you have any questions. I will be more than happy to answer to the best of my ability. please remember I am not in any way an expert on this subject, these are just little things that I have found helpful when I work.

Hugs,

Sophie