Category Archives: Life Drawing

How to draw figures – technique # 5 – draw the tone first

This technique was the one that had the most impact for me.  It changed the way I approached drawing – giving me an option that was the complete reverse of the way I had approached every other drawing I had ever attempted.

I picked the technique up in a life drawing class that I attended.  I had already started using charcoal on large sheets of butcher’s paper rather than using a pencil on an A4 sketch pad.  The size of the paper and the boldness of the charcoal line had already inspired me to approach drawing differently, and more confidently.

Then the tutor said that for the next drawing we were not going to use line.  Excuse me?  How does that work?  The answer: put your charcoal on its side and use its edge.  There was no way to use line.  I had always, always approached drawing by putting together lines first.  Often faint construction lines to begin with, then lines to highlight the figure or object, then maybe finishing off the drawing with some shading.  The drawings often seemed a little flat, lifeless.  Now I was being asked to provide the tone and shade of the drawing first.

This drawing started as blocks of tone created with a charcoal edge. Line has been added later, and a kneadable eraser used to clean up line and negative space, and to create contrast.

A good way to do this is to half close your eyes.  This takes away some of the detail and allows you to focus more on the tone.  You will find that some areas are the darkest, some areas will have half-tones and some areas will be light.  Now try putting that on paper.  Using the side of charcoal is a great way to represent tone, so you might like to try using that for this exercise.  Use as many shades of grey and black as it takes to get down your subject.

Once you have this exercise completed, you have a great foundation for your complete drawing.  You can now use line to pull out the shape of the figure.  You might also use a kneadable eraser to lift some of the tone to highlight some of the more lit areas.

If you, like me, tend to use line first then I thoroughly recommend this technique to give your drawings greater depth, and to help you explore tone which is one of the key elements of a successful drawing.

Anywhere where you have some thing or some person, and a light source, you will see a shadow. You will see shadows every day, everywhere, and so it is easy to become so used to them that you no longer register them. If someone asked you to point out the shadow you could do it, but if asked to describe a scene you might not think to mention the shadows.

Don’t forget this when you are thinking about how to draw figures. You might see the person modelling, but not register their shadow. But if you neglect to draw the shadow, then the drawing could look incomplete, as if there is something missing. Although we take shadows for granted, it can still look odd when they are not there.

The example picture is a quick drawing from a life-drawing class. I think the bold shadow of the figure gives the picture a depth it would not otherwise have.

Shadows also help to give the figure context, in a similar way to showing the figures surroundings can give context. It makes the drawing look more expressive of a real person, in a real situation, with a real light source.

You might see shadows on the figure itself, and you are likely to see shadows around the figure as well. If you really want to go to town with this you might even want to know that there are two main parts to a shadow. First, the umbra the darkest part, which is completely hidden from the light source. Then, the penumbra, a lighter part of the shadow, which may not be completely hidden from the light source. I don’t want to make this a physics lesson, but look at a few shadows. Try to find some shadows where you can see a lighter edge round a dark middle.

When you are drawing figures look for the shadow and include it in your drawing.