Drawing Skills
Shading with Only Three Values
How to shade a drawing with just light, middle and dark, so the form reads before any texture is added.
North Canvas
Latest posts
Drawing Skills
Common Proportion Errors in a Head Study
Common proportion slips in a head drawn from life, and the few comparisons that catch them before you add detail.
Drawing Skills
A Kitchen-Table Still Life Checklist
A short checklist for setting up a still life on a kitchen table, from the light and the crop to the ellipse and the values.
Drawing Skills
Comparative Measuring for Reliable Drawings
How to compare one part of a drawing with another, using halfway marks and plumb lines instead of guesswork.
Drawing Skills
Drawing Ellipses on Cups, Plates and Wheels
How to draw an ellipse that stays symmetrical, and how the angle of a cup or wheel changes the curve.
Drawing Skills
Cross-Hatching That Follows the Form
How to build shadow with cross-hatching that follows the form, instead of a flat net of lines laid over the object.
Drawing Skills
One-Point Perspective for a Simple Room
How one-point perspective places a simple room, with the horizon at your eye level and a single vanishing point.
Drawing Skills
Measuring Proportions with a Pencil
How to use a pencil at arm's length to compare heights and widths, and how to keep those measurements honest.
Drawing Skills
Contour Drawing: A Slow Line That Teaches Looking
How a slow contour drawing trains you to look at edges, and how to use the exercise without making it a style.
Art History
Drawing Aids, from the Grid to the Prism
How grids and optical aids have helped artists place a shape, and why the eye still has to finish the job.
Art History
Soft Pastel and the Close Portrait
Why soft pastel suited close eighteenth-century portraits, and how its powdery colour behaves on paper today.
Art History
The Street Poster: Type, Shape and a Glance
How late nineteenth-century street posters joined type and image, and what their glance still asks of a layout.