SKETCHING: FIRST-LINE TECHNIQUE

If you feel afraid or insecure when sketching for your work, or if you feel that you don’t have drawing skills and that ends up ruining all your work…

The technique I’m about to teach you will serve as a guide throughout your sketch and will allow you to maintain the necessary perspective and balance to avoid your work looking and feeling weird.

For your work to look and feel realistic you don’t just need to have used good painting techniques or achieved good blends.

The sketch is a fundamental part that directly influences the final result of your work.

If the elements of your sketch do not have the right balance and framing, anyone who observes your work will feel that it is not realistic:

• Your work expresses a strange movement when in fact it should be static.
• You have worked in a hurry and the final result is unprofessional.
• The concept of the work may be totally different from what you wanted to achieve.

In addition, if you do not use the First Line technique, it is very likely that you will have to make corrections to the sketch on the canvas, which can lead to wear and staining of the canvas.

To make this sketch we only need a pencil (I always recommend using a 2B or 3B as it does not leave much graphite on the canvas), and a ruler or a square to achieve level strokes.

We start by making a vertical line in the center of the work.

This line will pass right in the middle of the main element, in this case, a siphon.

Take good measurements so that this line is as vertical as possible.

Draw with a soft stroke and do not apply too much pressure with the pencil to make it easier to erase in case you need to correct it.

Then we draw the edges of the siphon and define the size.

If we work with a symmetrical object (as in this case), now it is just a matter of drawing the same on each side of the axis line.

Draw carefully and slowly, so that the final object is well achieved.

You can see the difference between a correctly leveled work and a tilted one.

In the next example, I show you how to draw a glass for a still life.

First, we mark a table line and try to take the measurements well before drawing it so that it looks correctly level with the horizontal.

Then we make the vertical axis that passes through the center of the cup and defines the size of each part of it.

As I told you before, do the sketching smoothly, without pressure.

It is not necessary to do every last detail, it is only a guide to the most important elements and proportions before painting.

And in this way, we achieve a neat, framed, and balanced sketch.

I hope this article has been very useful to you.

We recommend the following post: DOME EFFECT (GRADIENT TECHNIQUE)