Mark Crilley - The Two-Pencil Method: The Revolutionary Approach to Drawing It All

CONCLUSION

Pencil drawing has a special place in my life, one thats perhaps not too different from the place it occupies in yours. When I pick up a simple writing pencil and use it for a drawing, Im doing something that Ive done ever since I was a little boy. When did you start drawing? I am often asked. My answer is, by necessity, disappointingly vague: I dont know. Ive been drawing since before I can even remember.

Ah, pencils. With the exception of crayons and maybe sidewalk chalk, theres no other drawing tool more likely to be the first one a child uses for creating art. As years go by, that child may move on to oil paints or to thousand-dollar marker sets, but none of that fancy stuff can lay claim to being first .

As for colored pencils, they are also pretty common in childhood. A black colored pencil feels like a natural extension of a graphite pencil to me. Theres that pesky little unerasable aspect to it, to be sure. But it is in solidarity with a graphite pencil. It seems to say, Color is overrated. I never saw anything worth drawing that couldnt be done just fine in black and white. The graphite pencil and the black colored pencil arent twins exactly. But theyre definitely kindred spirits. And, as shown in this book, they get along awfully well.

Theres something primal about a pencil for me. It was the doorway through which I entered the world of art, the thing that showed me how plunking down a few lines on a piece of paper could create magic. Arrange those lines in the right way, and they can be anything. Thats not just me being poetic. They can be anything.

I was fascinated by pencil drawing as a child, to the point of obsession. And I am fascinated by it today, just as much as I ever was. Heres hoping you are, too, and that this book helps you take that fascination to a whole new level.

ONE

SIMPLE OBJECTS

Whether youre getting back into drawing after a long break, or youve never tried drawing before, its important to start with the basics. Leaping straight into the deep end with an overly ambitious project can lead to frustration and, all too often, giving up altogether. In this chapter, Ill start by showing you how to draw five simple objects: items that dont demand formidable drawing skills to render. Still, you may be surprised how beautiful such objects can be, given time, care, and the Two-Pencil Method.

EGG

Lets start with a lesson thats all about shading. A brown egg is an ideal subject here, as it requires a base layer of pale shading throughout, upon which you can build subsequent layers of darker tones. I suggest using natural, indirect lighting from a nearby window, instead of shining a lamp directly on your egg. The latter approach creates harsh areas of light and dark, rather than the subtle gradations youll see in the steps ahead.

With your graphite pencil, draw a light outline of the egg and its shadow. Take your time. Allow yourself to find the shape by trial and error. Dont press down hard with your pencil at this stage. Consider this preliminary work, much of which will be erased later.

Hold your pencil at a low angle to the page (see ) and begin adding a light base layer of shade throughout the whole image. Instead of moving the pencil at random, follow the surface of the egg with your pencil strokes. Doing so will help convey the eggs roundness, which translates into the drawing looking more solid and three-dimensional. Here, Ive left a small area blank to represent a highlight : the spot where light glints off the egg into your eyes.

Continue adding shading. Gradually reduce the length of your pencil strokes so that you can build up tone (areas of shading in which no individual lines are visible) carefully. When working on the shadow, pay attention to variations of darkness. In my case, I saw greater darkness beneath the egg than in areas farther away, and built up a heavier patch of graphite there in my drawing as a result.

Erase some of the earlier line work along the eggs edge to produce a clean contour in that area. You might be tempted to draw a bold line around the egg, but such lines dont exist in real life. For a realistic look, allow the contrast between the eggs tone and the white of the page to be the only thing that defines the eggs contour. At this stage, your shading should be very careful and precise.

Now, switch from graphite to the black colored pencil. Put your powers of observation to the test here. Scan the real life egg to identify the darkest areas. In my case, I observed a dark region along the eggs upper right-hand edge, as well as an intense strip of blackness extending from the area directly below the egg. At this stage, shading is very tightly controlled indeed. I use tiny circular motions of the pencil tip to build up shading in a slow, incremental way.

Youre heading into the home stretchwhat I call the final polishing phase . Here you can start focusing on finicky details. The brown egg I used had tiny speckles, so I carefully reproduced those in my drawing: adding little dots of darker gray wherever I saw them in real life. At this point, switchback and forth between the graphite and the colored pencils, allowing both to add further subtlety, where needed, throughout the drawing.

FINISHING THE PIECE

Dont be fooled: The differences between step 6 and what you see following arent a matter of ten or fifteen minutes of work. They are the result of a full hour or more of tweaking things, intensifying areas of darkness and smoothing out imperfections in shading. Let the real-life object be your guide. With patience, you can capture all the beautiful tones and details, resulting in a drawing you can really stand back and be proud of.

MUSHROOM

Now its time to take on an object with more details than an egg. A single white mushroom provides a nice gradual step up, bringing new challenges without overwhelming the beginner. Instead of replicating the shading techniques from the previous lesson, this time lets try a different approach: something looser and more improvisational.