Hi guys, I'm South African artist Lillian Gray and the owner of the Lillian Gray Fine Art school.
Today's lesson is all about shading!
One of the seven elements of art is form, and to create form we need to add shading!
If you imagine a ball or a sphere and you want to show that it is 3D,
and to really build that form, you'll have to add dark and light to create the 3D effect.
One of the most popular ways of creating shading is crosshatching.
But I would like to take it a step further.
I will show you guys how to crosshatch and how we apply it.
But I also would like to show you more advanced techniques of really adding texture to the object.
I want you guys to realize that art is a universal language.
What I mean by that is we really transcend cultural and language barriers with art.
If I draw a flower, somebody in Japan will understand that this is a flower,
somebody in Mexico will know that it's a flower,
somebody in Nigeria will know that it's a flower and we can all speak to each other by using a visual language.
So how do we communicate with what's in our hand? How do we talk with our pencil? How do I tell you this is glass,
this is fur, this is bark, this is cloth?
We are not going to approach all those different fibers and structures in the same way.
We have to change the way we talk, we have to communicate!
I want you to think about, regardless what you're doing, whether you've got a brush in
your hand, a pastel or a pencil, that you are talking and you are
talking to the world. You need to be able to
talk clearly and articulate well. In this next step, I want to take
it much, much further than just crosshatching. I want to show you guys how do you draw bark,
how do you draw skin,
how to do reflection on glass.
The go-to way to depict value and shading is hatching.
There are various different kinds of hatching.
We have parallel hatching, which is lines that are just running parallel to each other.
The darker you want it, the closer together you have to draw the lines.
The lighter you want it, the further away from each other you have to draw the lines.
The next technique is contour hatching. The contour of a
mountain is the up and the down. so your line is actually following the contour.
It's still parallel lines but they are bent, following the form or the shape of the object.
The third one is crosshatching, and this is where we cross lines with each other at
45 degrees to the one way or 45 degrees to the other way.
Once again, if you want a darker area lines are closer to each other,
if you want to lighter area, lines are further away from each other.
There's also extreme fine cross hatching and this is probably what I was addicted to in high school.
All my sketches used a lot of fine crosshatching to really show realism in an extreme way.
Then there is another one called basket woven hatching. And this is quite fun and it's a playful way to create form and shape.
The sixth method I just have to show you, but it will probably get you into an asylum.
That is either tick hatching or called stippling.
It is hectic, it's definitely a certain kind of personality type that will sit there and make a million dots to achieve what they like.
There's a lot of artists out there that uses this method that I respect, but it's not for me.
I can't sit there all day. I'll go insane and nobody has time for that!
It is a method that you need to be aware of, and you guys need to be able to use it.
And some of you will be highly attracted to it and would love to use it, but it's not a Lillian Gray favourite.
For our next exercise, I would like you guys to make small squares in your sketchbook. Three centimetres by three centimeters. Pro tip: don't make the squares too big, because
We're going to try and copy all these textures depicted here: fur, bark of a tree, orange peel, skin, leaves, hair, fabric, bricks, grass and snake skin. this exercise can get really overwhelming.
Guys this is a difficult exercise. It is supposed to feel really hard because
we are creating new neurological pathways in your brain. Whenever we learn something new,
it's going to be difficult before it becomes easy.
I always tell my students you have to imagine that you're in the Amazon jungle, with a machete,
trying to chop your way through, trying to make a road. Eventually, once you've
done all the chopping, you'd be able to walk. Eventually that will become a dirt road and
eventually with municipal agreement you can tar the thing, and eventually you can have a highway.
But for now, you're still in the jungle. You still there with your machete,
chopping your way through. It is going to be difficult.
I want you guys to apply the same principle, where we are going to be starting very
light and then working our way to our darks. Say for instance when you're doing your bark of your
tree you're going to start very lightly, and as soon as you want to depict all those crevices,
you're going to be moving to your bolder. darker pencils.
And guys, that concludes our lesson.
I really hope that you can go out there make some exceptional sketches, and please send it to me!
Post it on our Facebook group, post it on our Instagram. Send it to us, so we
can see how you guys are talking to the world!
This is peanut! He's officially our article CEO and he is head of accounting.
He will ensure that Griselda does her job, which is head of Admin.
He's always checking up on everybody and today he's here to inspect our YouTube channel.
I hope it is purrfect!