Drawing and Sketching for Beginners
Step by Step: Working with Tone – Swatches
Working in grayscale presents us with a few
challenges, firstly, the pencil is only capable of
making a limited range of shades or tones.
Secondly, in order to represent objects from the
world around us, we need to simplify what we
see and interpret colors as shades of black and
white.
In this exercise, you will practice your abilities to shade a range of tones. Plus, you will try to
produce consistency in your drawings by repeating the exercise, this time trying to match the
tones you have created in the first swatch.
This exercise can take some time and patience. The more often you repeat this exercise, the
better you will become at discerning tonal relationships and you will build your skills in
becoming a consistent quality sketcher.
Step 1: Draw your swatch
Lightly sketch out a rectangle. Then
divide this shape into 5 equal sections,
by drawing three vertical lines, evenly
spaced.
You will use each box as a container
to hold a single solid tone.
Squares an inch or two in size are a
good starting point.
Step 2: Shade
Begin to shade in each square,
starting from the right with a light
tone. Your first tone should be barely
visibly.
As you continue to shade each box to
the left of the last, you should make it
a shade darker.
Step 3: Build up Your Tones
Gradually build up your tones. You
are aiming to create five distinctly
spate shades of grey. The leftmost
should be the darkest your current
pencil can handle and the right most,
should be almost the color of the
paper. Logically, the middle tone
should be half way between the two
extremes.
Step 4: Repeat
Now you have reached the most
important step in this exercise,
repeatability!
As you progress in your journey to
learn how to sketch and draw, you
will start to establish your own style.
Style is like your signature, it is
personal to you and instantly
recognizable.
Style is the consistent way you handle your lines, your tones and your shapes. To speed up
your development you should be able to make a mark and make another one almost identical.
The same applies to tones, if you shade a mid-tone in one area of your drawing, you should
be able to shade the same tone in another area.
This step requires you to draw an identical rectangle below your first. Then repeat the earlier
steps of shading each square a distinct tone. Only this time, your goal is to match the ones in
the corresponding boxes.
Considerations
As you try to match your previous tones, you may need to adjust them so that they match.
Try to resist the temptation to adjust your original tones as this defeats the purpose of the
exercise. As a bonus challenge, find any magazine that has a black and white image in it, then
pick a spot and try to shade an equally dark tone. Not only will this test your shading skills,
but it will help train your eyes in spotting a mid-tone, a dark tone and a light tone.
Happy Drawing!
