HOW TO SHADE WITH POINTILLISM

How to Shade with Pointillism 

Credit: https://learntoart.wordpress.com/2009/08/23/how-to-shade-with-pointillism

Pointillism or stippling:  is when you use a series of dots to create an image. It takes time, and loads of patience, but the results can be incredibly impressive!

Pointillism is equally one of the technique of shading or painting. This can be achieved either with pencil, pen, paint etc.

In the case of pen usage, the best ones are fine tip pens with free-flowing ink. Ball point pens won’t work very well because they need to be moving for the ball to refresh the ink. I’ve used Staedtler Pigment Liners. You’ll also want a range of sizes as well. Something like an 01, an 03, and an 05 would work well.

You want to make sure the dots of the different sized pen are blended together. You don’t want to see the border where you switched pens. Also, don’t rush your mark-making. If you get careless, some of your points might get little tails. You want nice clean dots to create an even surface.

As with any drawing, you want to start out with a good line drawing. Outline the contours of your subjects, as well as the shapes of the major shadows and highlights. You want to have good guidelines for when it comes to filling in the values.

When using pointillism to shade, you need to think about values just like you do when shading with a pencil.

Around the highlights, use your finest pen and make the dots far apart. Avoid putting any dots inside the highlight area, but make sure that the points gradually become more and more farther apart closer to the highlight. You don’t want your marks to suddenly stop dead.

As the highlight fades to the midtones, switch to the middle-sized pen and mark your points closer together.

For the shadows, use the fatter pena nd make your marks close together. In the darkest areas, your dots may be so close together that no paper shows through. You might be tempted to  cheat and use the pen to shade in the entire shadow.

Try to resist!

It would be faster, but it would be obvious. With pointillism, it’s important to draw everything using only dots. The marks create a pattern or a texture that is visibile even in the solid black areas. If you have a really large area of black that would take you days to dot, you could try colouring it in solid, then adding a few dots on top to mimic the pattern.

Also, don’t draw any lines! Even if there are wrinkles or eyelashes, don’t draw a line. Use a series of points to create the line and it will look more natural. A solid line will be a distraction in amongst all those dots.

When your drawing is done, let the ink dry for ten minutes or so before erasing the pencil lines. You’d hate to smudge all your hard work!

Pointillism in Colour:

You can also use pointillism with paints or pastels. You do this by layering different colour dots on top of each other. When seen from far away, the dots blend together and create a different colour. A simple example of this would be dots of red and yellow, which would appear as orange from far away. This type of illusion was used extensively by Seurat.

This example from Wikipedia is A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, by Seurat.

HOW TO PAINT WITH ACRYLIC-For Beginners

NOTE: The Art Piece is one of my Paintings.

How to Paint With Acrylics;

To start an acrylic painting you need basically two things:
- Painting supplies
- Ideas for what to paint

Acrylic painting for beginners- all you need to know to get started- The content of this article is copyrighted

by Robie Benve | Source

Acrylic Painting Supplies

Gather your painting supplies in a well-lit area.

You’ll need:

Acrylic Paint: Get the best quality paint you can afford. Aim for artist quality, not student quality. The student quality hues have more fillers, and respond less efficiently to color and media mixing.

You don’t need many colors; a limited palette of basic colors is great for starters. To begin with a very limited palette, you can buy single tubes and make your own primary color combination.If you want a pre-made set, the Liquitex 4 Color Mixing set It has a good choice of tubes: Quinacridone Crimson, Yellow Medium Azo, Phthalo Blue (Green Shade), and Titanium White. - more details below. Black can always be obtained by mixing the three primary colors together.
Brushes of different shapes and sizes. The rule of thumb for brushes is to use big brushes for big areas and loose painting style, and use small brushes for small areas and details.

Painting support : canvas, paper, board, etc. Acrylic paint works on many kinds of surfaces. If you buy pre-primed canvas, make sure it’s primed with acrylic gesso.

A canvas primed for oil painting is not suitable. Acrylics don’t stick on oily surfaces, and would peel off with time.
Water. Get a big jug of water to rinse the brushes when you switch from one color to another. Better yet, you should have two containers of water: one to rinse brushes from the paint, and one with clean water to use to dilute paint and moisten brushes when needed.
Cloth rag or paper towel. To dab brushes after rinsing, correct mistakes, etc.

Easel: It’s beneficial to keep your support at an angle that is quite perpendicular to your vision. This helps a lot with perspective and proportions. To keep your canvas or board inclined, you can use a stand up easel or a table top one. Easels come in different shapes and prices

LEARNING HOW TO DRAW WITH CHARCOAL PENCIL

Note; Above are works of my students not professional works

Drawing using Charcoal Pencil:

With the aid of charcoal pencil, begin by rendering the major shapes in the still life. Begin with large shapes, asking yourself "comparison" questions as you draw the components of the still life. Is this item bigger or smaller than the first item you have drawn - is it higher or lower on the picture plane - is this item round, angular, tall, short, skinny - the questions can be numerous and each one will help you make an accurate drawing. Do not get bogged down in detail - just try to capture the major shapes, sizes and spatial relationships between the objects. If you make a "mistake" in your drawing at this point, do not erase, but rather redraw the lines so that you are more satisfied with them.
Once you have the still life drawn to your satisfaction, it is time to begin to define the highlights and shadows you see in the arrangement. As you toned your paper in the earlier step, you were creating the medium gray value for the still life. Now you will turn your attention to any value that deviates from this medium gray. This will apply to both areas that are darker than the medium gray and to areas that are lighter. The darker areas will be rendered with application of the black charcoal. The charcoal will be applied in heavier amounts where the still life is darkest and with less pressure and charcoal in areas that are lighter than those darkest parts. To achieve a gradual transition from lighter to darker areas, you can use your blending stumps to soften the transition areas. I must interject here that you must resist the urge to blend the charcoal with your fingers. Our hands have oils that naturally occur in our skin. By using your fingers to blend the charcoal you are rubbing these oils into your drawing. While it will usually not be apparent initially, over time those oils will begin to show in the drawing and compromise the long-term quality of your drawing.
The next step is to indicate where the light is striking the objects in the still life. These areas will be lighter than the medium gray your toned paper provides. To create these highlights you will be using your eraser to lift some of the charcoal back out of the toned paper. You will see that you can remove most, but not all, of the charcoal. It's fun and unexpected to use an eraser as a drawing tool, and in this project it is a very effective one. Experiment with the eraser and the pressure you apply to lift the charcoal. A myriad of effects can be achieved by using the eraser in different ways. The beauty of the kneaded eraser is that you can shape it into all kinds of edges, points, etc. to vary the effects in lifting the charcoal from the toned paper. For the lightest lights in the drawing you will need to apply some of the white charcoal. As mentioned earlier, these light areas can be blended with the tortillions - just make sure that the blending stump is clean before you attempt this light area blending. The tortillions can be cleaned by rubbing the dirty parts off with sandpaper.
While I have described the creation of light and shadow on the still life drawing in terms of "steps," you do not have to do all of the shading first and the highlighting second. In fact, you can go from one to the other interchangeably I tend to work from dark to light on this type of project, but by no means do you have to. As your drawing progresses, occasionally step back from the picture and consider the image as a whole. When you are satisfied with your drawing - when you feel good about the variety of lights and darks portrayed, when the drawing looks "finished," it is time to stop. Many artists have the problem of overworking their creations and thereby lessening the quality and spontaneity of their piece. Knowing when to quit is one of the most overlooked skills in the artist's repertoire

Materials Checklist;

*Charcoal
*Eraser
*White Charcoal
*Charcoal Paper
*Facial Tissues (Kleenex)
*Blending Stumps (Tortillions)
*Fixative
*Creating the Toned Paper

DRAWING (Focus on Human Face)

Drawing is the use of line to describe or represent an object/image on a surface which could be;
*Still life
*Life/Figure
*Nature
*Landscape
*Imaginative etc

To learn the basics on how to draw Human face under figure drawing, click on the link below.

Credits to; https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dbRMCgtcchw

PATTERN DESIGN WITH PHOTOSHOP

Pattern design is a repeated  motif on a surface and this can be achieved with the aid of motif. Motif however is a unit of design, which develop into pattern when it is repeated. Pattern design can be in block repeat, halfdrop repeat, Mirror repeat, Simple repeat, Block repeat etc.
This design are seen on surfaces like wallpaper, carpet, fabric etc.

Below is a link to a video on how pattern can be done using Photoshop.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rua9Cml_oTQ