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Age Range: 7+
Time to Complete: 25 minutes
Supplies Needed
Paper
Pencil
Crayon, Colored Pencils, Paint
Reference Picture of an Animal
Shading Exercise:
Start by making a circle on your paper. Draw a smaller circle in the top left corner of your paper to represent your light source.
Your light is hitting the top left part of your circle. That area will have the most light so will require the least amount of black. The bottom will be the darkest so will require darker shading. Apply pressure on your pencil to get a darker shade. Hold your pencil in different ways to really understand what works best for you.
1. Drawing lightly with a pencil, sketch out the basic shapes of your animal. For the raven:
a circle for the head
a triangle for the beak
circles and ovals for the body
a long oblong shape for the tail feathers
lines for the feet
2. With your drawing tools, in this case we used charcoal, start adding the details over your basic shapes and important details of your animal.
For the raven, the wing, the beak, the eye and some of the texture of the feathers are the first things that are defined.
3. Decide where your light is coming from, in this case, the upper left corner of the page. Add more black or dark color to the part of the animal furthest from the light.
For the raven, most of the animal is black. The charcoal is only lightly used for most of the animal. Heavy pressure is applied for the shadows. The highlights are left white or an eraser is used.
Tina Dille, Memory, watercolor on yupo mounted on sintra, BMoA Permanent Collection 2017.09.25
Tina Dille is a California based artist who paints what she loves most – animals and wildlife. Dille currently lives in the mountains in Tehachapi, CA. Her favorite animal muse by far are ravens. “Ravens are one of the smartest creatures on our planet earth!” Dille commonly uses acrylic on canvas and watercolor media. She has shown her work extensively in California and is an award-winning artist.
From The Loop Newspaper, 2017.
Figurative: Pertaining to representation of form or figure in art.
Form: A three-dimensional volume or the illusion of three dimensions (related to shape, which is two-dimensional); the particular characteristics of the visual elements of a work of art (as distinguished from its subject matter or content).
Pattern: Anything repeated in a predictable combination.
Shade: A color that has black added to it.
Texture: The surface quality of materials, either actual (tactile) or implied (visual). It is one of the elements of art.