Realistic Technique for Drawing 5 Textures in Ink

Let's look at five common surfaces that often present problems to beginners when they're starting to draw.

They're commonly called textures, and there's many more than this, but here are five of them that are pretty common in drawing subjects.

The first that we're seeing now is a hedge.

There's also shrubs, there's brickwork, there's tiles, and there's grass as well.

So, while they're commonly called textures, I prefer to think of them as surfaces, and I want to point out

that the edges are just as important to create the feel of the surface.

And so let's pay particular attention in in some of these in particular to to the edges.

Now, this drawing is been done at three times the actual drawing speed.

So, if you want to see me draw this perhaps more beginner's version of the sorts of surfaces, the textures that we have here in this small section of a larger photo, you can use that cog icon to do that.

And please hit that like button now for me if you're finding this series of not quite before and after, but something like that, if you're finding this a helpful way of presenting teaching for these subjects.

So, this is all happening pretty quickly, so slow it down if you want to see it.

But quite possibly, you know already how to do this. Little mistake there, but I want you to realize that this took me seven minutes to draw in actual time, but my second drawing took 21 minutes, and you're going to see that in double time, so you're going to see that with a greater chance of appreciation, what appreciating what I'm doing. A few comments about this, for the foliage, for the hedge, and for the shrubs, it looks more like just a pattern. The brickwork isn't to scale, and because I've tried to draw too much detail, I haven't drawn it very well. The tiling is very simplified, and it looks a bit cartoon-like, well, as does all of this. And the grass again is more a symbol for grass, and I haven't allowed for the fact that we see the closer grass differently to the further away grass. But we're going to compare these at the end side by side, and then side by side, but with the reference in the center. So, now you're watching this at double speed, so if you slow this section down to half video speed, you'll be able to see it at my drawing speed. And I really would suggest you do that for at least a part of this, because a very helpful way of learning how to do this is to see the time it takes for someone who's very experienced in doing it, and then realizing that as a beginner, you're going to end up being quite a bit slower, but it creates realistic expectations. So, with this hedge, notice I'm paying attention to the edges. I haven't drawn two straight lines across, almost like a ribbon of white going across the page, because when we look at our reference, that's not the effect we see. On the far side, we see a hard edge, but not a straight hard edge or a smooth hard edge. Lots of little ripples for where there are leaves catching the light, that are highlighted by the shadows behind. On the closer side of the edge of the hedge, we've got more of a diffuse effect, and I'm trying to give a sense with my hatching and the fact that the hatching lines don't line up exactly of of a a more rounded effect. Now, with this hedge, I want to put value on the close on the on the flat side closest to us, the vertical side, because I want to contrast it to the top of the hedge, which is getting the sunlight. I want to get that strong sunlight effect. So, I'm using hatching, but I'm doing fairly vertical hatching to reflect the the fairly straight vertical edge of the hedge. I'm also doing lots of little, I'm thinking of them as dimple marks as well, to reflect the shadow of between the leaves. This this took me quite a bit of time to do. This was one of the the more time-consuming sections of this drawing, but some things, if we want them to look right at the end, take a little more commitment. Beginners often take shortcuts because they don't fully appreciate that there is a time commitment and an effort commitment. And if you go back and have a look at the the the beginner's section, you'll notice that with the bricks, that towards the end, I'm making the bricks larger because that often happens. And if you actually look at that hedging that I did in the earlier version, you'll notice that the pattern that I squiggled on for the second half is bigger and rougher, because I often see that. I can almost always tell where someone started doing their their leaf texture, by seeing smaller, perhaps more carefully placed squiggles than what they use at the end. And that's a that's a big issue too. We have to we have to be prepared to pace our intentionality equally across the whole mark making of a certain subject, and across our whole drawing, in fact. So, now you see how I'm creating this this edge. I'm I'm actually bringing lines up and down in both directions, and I'm paying particular attention to make sure I get some little little bobbles on the paper where I'm not putting ink, to be those little leaves and things that are standing up, getting the light, and therefore showing up, even though they're very small, and creating a little a little unevenness across that top. Also, notice that the, if you like, the each side of this light light ribbon-ish shape that we see from here is not equal thickness. Some parts are thinner than others because the surface is not completely horizontal. But you can see now I've changed my mark making for these shrubs that are coming up over the window. I need to draw them first because I can't really draw the window behind them unless I've drawn the closer things. Well, I can, but it's just not going to look very good. So, I'm trying to find marks to indicate some of the individual leaves, because we can see some of the individual leaves, but I don't want to be drawing all individual leaves. And I suspect there's two different types of shrubs here. There's there's a lower down one, which is more leafy, and so I'm particularly using hatching and value for that. And then there's the ones behind that that have these branches and have much more sparse leaf, and I imagine they have probably some flowers at some stage as well. But I'm also positioning where the upper and lower lines for this band of white plaster work on the outside, or white rendering on the outside of the building is. So, now I'm coming down with my windows. Now, in my first example, my beginner's example, I oversimplified these windows, and I didn't do as good a job as I could have done at suggesting the depth of these windows. The fact that if we look at the left side, we can actually see the three dimensionality, the thickness of the wall and the thickness of the timber beading. I've made more effort to include that in this drawing. Now, again, remember this is double my my drawing speed. No, it's not double, sorry. It is. It is double. I don't make that mistake with this strut, but notice I do that depth line underneath because we we can see up underneath it a little bit. So, now I'm just filling in a few odd leaves now that my windows are done. And notice how I didn't draw my window lines straight through the leaves. Now, I'm sorry about this. Um, there's a few spots where my hair drops in in front where I bent forward too much. There's one bit where I actually took out 10 seconds, 15 seconds, because my great head was stuck in the middle of the camera, so I thought I'd spare you. So now, getting closer towards the end, and I can now define that band. I need to put a bit of ink where that that rendered band going across the building isn't. And then a little bit of the brickwork underneath just to create a sense of that. Notice with my bricks, I've favored the horizontal lines over the vertical lines. In my experience, the vertical lines are very hard to draw and have look right. And remember, we're not trying to draw bricks, we're trying to give the feel that there are bricks. And in just a few places, I've drawn a vertical line, but in other parts, I've just gone dot dot dot dot dot. And I think that works quite well, the dot dot dot dot dot. It's something I've only been doing recently for the last few months. My style is always evolving, and the techniques I use are always been tweaked. If I if if I think, oh, it might just look a bit better if I do this. I experiment, and if it works, I incorporate it. It becomes easier and easier to improve the better we get. Now, notice down here at the bottom of the hedge, I didn't have a straight hard edge, because that won't create the effect of what we see in life, which is not a straight line. Even though there is actually a straight edge there. And now I do the grass. Now, firstly, notice how small these marks are compared to the others, because even though this is grass, if I look at this grass at this distance, the best I can see are a few tiny suggestions of blades of grass at the very front. Tiny blades of grass, but mostly, it's just dots. Or actually, I really can't see much at all. I mustn't draw what I think is there, what I know is there. I need to limit my marks to create what we can see at this view, at this distance, in this light. Now, here are the two side by side. And you can see quite clearly that the differences of the second way of drawing create a more realistic effect. When we don't draw the effect of the detail, but we try and draw the detail, and we end up oversimplifying it and often drawing symbols, we end up with a pretty cartoon-like effect. What do you think? Let's just look at them still with the reference in the middle. Please hit that like button if you haven't. Why not subscribe to my channel, I have dozens, probably hundreds of videos like this, that demonstrate this technique of trying to capture the effect of the detail or of the texture if you like, rather than draw the detail. It's not just these subjects. Good day, I'm Stephen Travis. Hope you found this helpful. Why not have a go? This reference photo, of course, on my channel community page. There's a link in the video description that will take you straight to it. Why not have a go drawing yourself? Five surfaces, five textures in one go, to start perhaps developing in a more realistic way of drawing. But in the end, however you draw them, make sure you have fun. I'll see you next time. Bye.