Free book: Drawing Portraits Post #016

1.2.23 Sketch

A sketch is a quick drawing. Sketches are useful tools to explore shape, value, contrast, texture and composition. It will be useful to create many rapid sketches of parts and the whole before finally committing to a full rendering. You might sketch someone's ear twenty times from different angles just to get a good feel for the final picture. When you do this, it makes the final rendering easy.

1.2.24 Weight

There are two kinds of weight relevant to our drawing. One is a measure of how heavy is the paper. This is measured in gsm. Heavier papers will cost more, but they are likely to cope with rough handling. Light paper will crease easily, and it will not be easy to use an eraser without damaging it. The weight of paper is measured by the physical weight of 500 full-size sheets. It is given in grams or pounds. A typical useful weight for drawing is 220 gsm. (grams)

The other kind of weight is about composition. If you think of a cone standing on its point, then this cone, even though it is just a piece of paper, it is compositionally weighted at the top. When you frame a picture, it is is conventional to put a mat around the picture, and that mat sits in the frame. The border of this frame is often made wider at the bottom to add visual weight. This helps the picture to sit on something solid or visually heavier at the bottom. We expect objects to look heavier at the bottom. Within the picture, we might add more detail in the foreground, and greater contrast, and an overall darker tone to the lower 1/10th  to add weight. Sometimes it is desirable to break this rule.