 |
By  Ric Sattler.
The first project: A knife
In our first, small project, we will paint a simple knife with a wooden grasp:
Needed materials
The following pastels are necessary besides drawing paper, a tracing paper and a cotton swab or paper tissue:
 |
Medium hard pastels in the colors light blue, dark grey, medium grey, dark-brown, orange, gold-yellow, black and white. Two hard pastel pencils can be used for the outlines and detailed structures. Additionally a black and a white pastel pencil might be helpful.
|
How to transfer the sketch to the drawing paper
You should only draw the sketch directly to the drawing paper, if you have the appropriate skills, since it could be difficult to correct errors. The paper can be damaged by erasing and change the behavior when drawing on this parts of the paper.
The sketches are roughly marked on a separate sheet of transfer paper and transferred then to the drawing paper. There are some simple cheats:
 |
First the knife is sketched on a sheet of tracing paper.
|
|
Now turn the transfer paper and draw the lines again on the back. It is helpful to choose here the colors, which you will use later in the picture. Now you have a mirrored image of the knives.
|
 |
 |
Now turn the transfer paper and put it on the drawing paper. The pastel-side of the transfer paper will now be in touch with the drawing paper. With a paper tissue you can now trace the outlines of the knife. The pastel dust will be transferred from the tracing paper to the drawing paper. During the trace, the tracing paper should not be shifted and can be fixed with e.g. adhesive strips as long as these will not damage the drawing paper.
|
|
When you remove the tracing paper, you will see the sketch transferred to your drawing paper.
|
 |
| Tip: How to increase the size of a sketch
Sometimes you draw a sketch on a small sheet of paper and want to transfer it to a larger sized drawing paper. Here can make yourself the life easier, by scanning and mirroring the sketch with a PC and then print it out in increased size. Many graphic programs and copiers (e.g. Xerox) give you the appropriate functions. Now trace the lines of the increased and mirrored version of the sketch and transfers them as described above to the drawing paper.
|
As one paints a knife
After transferring the sketch of the knife to the paper, the "painting" might begin:
 |
Large parts of the paper and the sketch are protected by a smooth paper against smearing. Put one piece of tissue paper on top, if it is hot and you are sweating.
Color surfaces with smooth edges are drawn simply with the help of a template paper. To draw a sharp edge, use a piece of paper (yellow in the photo), and draw over the edge of this paper.
|
|
The blade of the knife is cross hatched with light-grey and somewhat light blue pastels (for the steel glow), whereby brighter areas for the light reflections are spared.
Similarly, the brass parts of the grasp are hatched with orange and yellow pastels.
Subsequently, the wooden grasp is brown dyed, whereby only little chalk is laid on, so that the grasp not becomes too dark.
|
 |
 |
With a cotton swab the surfaces are smudged, until they are evenly dyed. The brighter areas of the light reflections stay unchanged.
|
|
After the basic colors of the knife were specified, the shady areas of the wooden grasp are darkened with dark brown and the brighter areas (in the center of the surface) are lightened with orange.
The grain of the wood results from thin, dark lines on the lightened areas of the surface and from brighter lines in the dark areas of the surface.
|
 |
 |
The brass of the grasp changes its look with white and yellow pastels (highlight) and dark-brown pastels to typical metal. The highlights and strokes of sharpening the blade are emphasized with a white pastel.
|
|
Subsequently, the paper is cleaned e.g. with a kneading rubber around the knife.
|
 |
| Tip: Remove pastel strokes
On structured papers the pastel strokes and the pastel dust can be removed with a brush.
|
 |
The cotton swab, which was used for smudging the blade, is used to put another shade around the bottom-side of the knife, which lets the knife look more three-dimensional. You can put additional grey pastel dust onto the cotton swab by touching grey pastels with the tip of the swab.
|
|
After approx. 20 minutes the first pastel painting is finished.
|
 |
You have my permission to copy this picture for exercises. I would be pleased to have a look on your results here in Elfwood or on your homepage. Please send me a mail for information.
Different types of paper
If you paint the knife, with an equal amount of time, to different types of paper, you will get different results:
| |
On drawing paper you will get a very clear picture, which appears somewhat colorless. That is because of the fact, that only few color pigments hold on the relative smooth paper
|
|
On white Ingres-paper more color pigments will hold, since this paper has more structure. However the picture works out somewhat less in detail.
|
 |
 |
Greygreen Ingres-paper affects the knife to more realism. The colors work out better.
|
|
On Ivory velours paper the surfaces is smoother and colors look better. velours paper consists of a paper layer, which is covered with a thin layer of Veloursfibres. velours paper is more expensive than normal paper, but I prefer it for pastel paintings.
|
 |
 |
Here is a comparison of the four paper types.
|
To paint the knife on four different paper types, was a very interesting experiment, since I painted nearly all the time on velours paper. After I painted the first knife on normal paper, I asked myself whether I should not paint more frequently on "normal" paper. However this only lasted until I painted the knife on velours paper. Apart from the other characteristics, painting on velours paper is very much fun, since the chalks seem to flow very smooth over this paper. Therefore this paper is my personal favorite, even if it is relatively expensive. (German readers may contact me for cheaper sources of supply).
| Tip: colored paper
Normally you will rarely find clean-white surfaces in real life and these often reflect colored light or colors from the environment. Therefore pastel paintings on colored paper seams more realistic than on white paper. The color of the paper gleams through the pastels and give influences to the choice of colors.
|
 |
At last a picture of a sea dragon on black velours paper. Not yet finished.
|
What comes next?
This tutorial does not end with this chapter. As soon as they appear, the following chapters will introduce further more materials together with their characteristics and usage. In addition I will show how to draw humans (skin, hair, eyes), equipment (clothes, belt, decoration), weapons (metal, wood), surfaces (stone, metal, glass, wood, wool) and how to mix pastels with water color, ink, felt-tip pens and other techniques.
I would be pleased for suggestions, spelling corrections and visitors on my websites.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
 Back to the FARP main page.
 The collection of art and writing tutorials in the Elfwood Fantasy Art Resource (F.A.R.P.) is a part of Elfwood.
The FARP logo was created by  Miguel Krippahl (The muscular guy in the FARP-logo) and  Thomas F Abrahamsson (The text and general graphic design). Those sections written by volunteers are copyrighted to Thomas Abrahamsson and the respective writer. Elfwood is a project once founded by Thomas Abrahamsson. All rights reserved. Unauthorized Reproduction of the graphics, writings, and materials on these pages is absolutely prohibited! You may consider all material on these pages protected and copyrighted, unless otherwise noted. You may NOT use the images found at the FARP or Elfwood pages on your home pages! All of these images are copyright protected! Everything you see here represent the collaborative effort of the Elfwood community and Thomas Abrahamsson. Please read the Legal Disclaimer for more info on warranties/etc for these pages!
|
|
Anon.
Loading...
