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  Colored pencils

  Colored pencils are available in every hue imaginable. They are suitable for both drawing and coloring.

  You can work with colored pencils just as with graphite pencils, the only difference being that most colored pencils cannot be erased. The drawing technique is exactly the same: by consolidating the strokes you create deeper hues, and the lightest color is the white of the paper.

  In addition, when working with colored pencils, you can layer different hues to create mixed colors. In sketchbooks, colored pencils are especially suited for adding colored accents to drawings and for making rapid notes of important colors.

  It’s also nice to use colored pencils directly for drawing. For instance, it is very effective to make a line drawing with two or three colored pencils and use the transition of colors to intensify the contrast between different parts of the picture.

  Tip:

  Don’t throw away the “stumps” of pencils you’ve sharpened down; save them for traveling.

  It’s a lot easier to transport an assortment of stumps than a box of colored pencils, and a stump is usually exactly the amount of color you’ll need.

  Ballpoint pens

  According to legend, the ballpoint pen—or Biro—was a by-product of space exploration: in the search for a pen that would work in zero gravity, Americans spent millions and finally invented the ballpoint pen. The Russians simply reverted to the pencil.

  This story is entertaining, but nonsense. The ballpoint pen was patented as early as 1938 in Hungary by László Bíró. (One of its predecessors was a leather-marking pen from the nineteenth century.) Ballpoint pens long had a bad reputation among artists as cheap products, but they are excellently suited for drawing. One advantage they have is that the intensity of the line can be controlled by applying more or less pressure to the paper. This is particularly good for hatching. With careful pressure, they produce fine shades.

  In addition, ballpoint pens are inexpensive, easy to care for, and long lasting: the ink in one pen is enough to draw a line three to six miles in length. For these reasons, a ballpoint pen belongs in every pencil case.

  And, of course, pencils

  It’s said that the Egyptians poured lead into papyrus reeds five thousand years ago to make writing implements. When graphite was discovered, it was mistaken for lead, which may be why many still call the pigment core the “lead.” The “lead” of a pencil is actually made of graphite and clay. The mixture of these two components determines the hardness of the pencil; the more clay it contains, the harder the pencil. Softer pencils are better for drawing.

  In terms of labeling, H means hard in pencils, and B soft. A pencil labeled HB is in the middle. The softer the pencil, the higher the number before the letter B; 2B and 3B pencils are best for drawing.

  The major advantage of pencils is that you can use varying degrees of pressure or cover to create gray shades. Using a pencil, you can approach your subject very carefully, but you can also produce strong, forceful lines. Best of all, you can erase pencil lines! Merely the possibility of correction gives beginners, in particular, that crucial feeling of security. Hence, a pencil unites an entire range of possibilities in one simple, inexpensive utensil.

  Although the pencil is an all-around talent, however, I wouldn’t recommend it for sketchbooks without reservations.

  The disadvantage of pencils is that they constantly need to be sharpened. Even retractable pencils, with replaceable and extendable leads, are no exception. This can be disruptive while sketching, especially when rapidity is demanded, as your implement will get dull at all the wrong moments. In addition, pencils (even colored pencils) are quite fragile. If you drop a pencil, the lead inside often breaks, which you won’t notice until the next time you try to sharpen it. The lead crumbles and can no longer be sharpened properly.

  I also find it bothersome that soft pencils, in particular, tend to smear. For a regular drawing, you can prevent smudges by laying a piece of white paper under the ball of your hand. But in a sketchbook, drawings tend to rub off onto the opposite page or smudge from friction between the pages.

  The solution is to use a fixative. However, this means having a spray bottle on hand at all times. I usually get around this by laying a sheet of white paper between the pages of my book and fixing the pencil sketch at a later time. Contrary to what many people think, hairspray is not a suitable substitute for a fixative, since it yellows and is sticky.

  Tip:

  Pencil lines can also be fixed by painting over them, especially with watercolors. Apply a thin coating of color and they won’t smudge anymore!

  Markers, glitter pens, and beyond

  The sheer number of tools you can use for drawing is amazing. You can draw with indelible pencils, with the timber marking pens used by forestry workers, with brush pens and highlighters.

  Above all, there are many kinds of felt-tip pens, a family that includes markers made especially for drawing. Markers are available in every hue and are (for good reason) very popular with artists. Unfortunately, markers are quite expensive and they also usually soak through the pages of sketchbooks, so require special coated paper. (Recently, art supply stores have begun carrying so-called marker sketchbooks for this purpose.) In addition, many stationery stores offer hundreds of pens and pencils made not for art drawing, but for writing and decorative purposes. There are glitter and neon pens, marker pens, highlighters, and gold and silver pens that can all be used for drawing, particularly for special effects.

  The only downside of using these kinds of pens is that you will not be able to reproduce your drawings true to the original. When you scan your sketches and print them, you’ll notice that the lovely glitter effect gets lost since the pigments in these pens are often artificial. They contain luminous paints or metal pigments that cannot be reproduced by color printers.

  I nevertheless advise you to try out various pens. Draw with everything you can get your hands on. When all else fails, you can even draw with espresso.

  Tip:

  A few classic media are not well suited for use in sketchbooks. These include media that smudge when you turn the pages, such as wax crayons, pastel crayons, and charcoal. In addition, any medium that requires a long drying time, such as oil paint, is impractical.

  Watercolors

  The classic way to color in sketchbooks is to use watercolors. Watercolors possess natural hues, are quick to apply, and are very easy to carry in handy boxes. Applied incorrectly, however, watercolors can look pretty awful. Also, it’s quite easy to use watercolors incorrectly. As practical as they are, it takes a good deal of time to master them.

  This is well worth the effort, though, since watercolor glazes (layers of color) can greatly enhance drawings. The important thing to remember when employing glazing techniques is omission. There is no white watercolor paint; the white (and all light hues) is the unpainted surface of the paper. Therefore, with watercolor we always work from light to dark. Basically, watercoloring is like drawing: fill the dark areas with color and leave the light areas empty.

  In sketchbooks, it is often sufficient to color only a few accents. Paint what seems important to you and bravely leave the rest unpainted. Your eyes will fill in the rest.

  Tip:

  A small, off-the-shelf watercolor set is sufficient for a sketchbook. A small metal cup is also useful.

  Portable brushes are practical for when you’re on the go.

  If you want to work on larger surfaces with watercolors, you have to work fast. Begin with the lighter areas (such as the sky) and work your way to the darker sections.

  The important thing is not to use water too sparingly. For example, to paint the sky, mix plenty of paint and water beforehand so you don’t run out halfway through. If you have to interrupt your work to mix more paint, it will be visible later on in your painting.

  The rule with watercolors is to work quickly. The faster you work, the more convincing the results will be.

 
Tip:

  Use watercolors to enhance figures. Just a few colored brushstrokes will bring your drawings to life.

  Complementary colors (those opposite each other on the color wheel) intensify one another and make otherwise pale watercolors shine! (Above: red and green.)

  Collage

  Collage offers endless possibilities: you can integrate admission tickets, restaurant bills, labels, bus tickets, slips of paper with telephone numbers, business cards, personal notes, and thousands of other things in your sketches. All you need is a little glue and imagination! Collages are inspiring and have narrative force. Years later, they will call up memories as no photograph can.

  The most appealing thing about using mixed materials is when you integrate them into your drawing to provide additional information. Add the label from a nasal spray bottle to a portrait of someone who has a cold or, as in this example, a chicken soup label for a sketch of having the flu while traveling. In other words, use collage to add meaning to your drawings!

  Tip:

  Stamps can also enhance your drawings. When you are drawing in museums, restaurants, shops, cafés, or tourist sights, ask them to “stamp” your page. The stamp documents the event and is an additional design element.

  Visualizing your ideas

  When I was a child, I often dreamed that I was holding something really great in my hands—for instance, lots of chocolate. During the dream I became aware that when I woke up, I’d leave the chocolate behind. That really made me think: isn’t there a way to transport something from my imagination to reality? Of course there is!

  With a drawing, you can depict not only things that are real, but also those that only exist in your mind. Use drawings to visualize your ideas! Use your sketchbook for your scribbles and drafts and to explain your ideas to clients with a few quick lines (as with my sketches for editorial illustrations, shown opposite). One thing is certain: ideas are hard to photograph, but very easy to draw!

  Blind contour drawing

  Let’s try a little exercise. Close your eyes. Then, take the fingers of your non-drawing hand and go over your face with them. Carefully stroke your eyebrows, your closed eyes, your nose, and your mouth. Go past your chin and up to your ears and your forehead.

  Now, pick up a pencil in your other hand. Keeping your eyes shut, draw your face while continuing to feel its contours with your first hand. When you open your eyes and take a look at your drawing, you may see that one eye is next to your ear and the other by your mouth. But you may also notice that your strokes are confident and loose.

  Now, try it with a model. This time, keep your eyes open. Look closely at your model but don’t look at what you are drawing.

  Follow the lines of the face with your eyes and draw the portrait at the same time. Don’t peek at the page! Keep your eyes on your model and do not examine your results until you are finished. Again, you will notice that the result is unusually loose. An eye still might be next to an ear, but that doesn’t matter at first. You’re on the right track.

  The technique of blind contour drawing is one of the primary aids in drawing and is excellent for sketches. When drawing, get used to not always looking and then drawing, but train yourself to work simultaneously. You can look at the paper to check where the mouth goes and adjust proportions, but then draw the mouth with your eyes fixed on the model. You’ll notice that your drawings will improve, you will work faster, and your lines will gain a self-confident sweep. As strange as it may seem, blind contour drawing will teach you to observe more closely and to draw more confidently.

  Tip:

  Color your blind contour drawings later to deliberately intensify the shapes.

  Your line is you

  Draw in whatever way comes naturally. Every artist has something like a “natural line” that he or she was practically born with. Once you learn to accept yours, you’ll have taken a big step forward. Don’t look at others’ lines and do not attempt to imitate other artist’s “better” or “more modern” styles of drawing. Anyone can learn tricks and gimmicks but you must learn to accept your own line and the way you draw—it’s your own unmistakable signature! In time, you’ll come to realize that your signature is beautiful.

  So draw “by guess and by gosh.” Believe me: what makes drawings exciting is what is authentic and personal. Your own drawings will profit from it.

  Mistakes are allowed!

  This is what we do about mistakes on the computer: Command Z. Of course, this isn’t possible in a sketchbook, and that’s the way it should be.

  The problem with undoing is that it’s too easy. You rob yourself of the potential that your mistakes hold.

  You can learn from your mistakes, but only if you are legitimately annoyed by them and don’t just flick them away by snapping your fingers. Only if your mistakes bother you can you learn to avoid them the next time around.

  The second thing that makes mistakes useful is this: if you always do everything “right,” you’ll be limited to reproducing what you already had in mind. But what’s usually in your mind are pictures you’ve already seen: other people’s pictures.

  As an artist, you should not look for second-hand pictures, but make your own! Coincidences and mistakes will stand by you, cheering you on. Sometimes we need an unlucky splotch of coffee on the page or a ruined drawing for new ideas to dawn on us.

  Tip:

  Do not tear any “failed” pages from your sketchbook. It turns out ugly and also ruins the opposite page in the binding. Instead, revise the page on another occasion. Continue drawing on it, make a collage, or use some color. You’ll be surprised by what a flawed page can offer.

  Drawing what you feel

  How you see things and the feelings you have for your subjects impacts your drawings. Drawing is not only for depicting and reproducing subjects, but also for intensifying what you’ve seen and adding emotion to the subject. This will only make the drawing better!

  So don’t be afraid to draw the way you feel. Use your choice of medium to assess things, and to portray things compactly or expansively, erratically or peacefully. Add elements, such as color, to reveal how you feel about the subject. The red in the background of the rider below is not just there to fill the background, but to transport an emotion.

  In art, the emotional middle ground is deadly. The more opinionated a drawing is, the more entertaining it will become!

  Drawing is not photography

  Unlike in a photograph, you do not need to show everything in a drawing.

  When you snap a photograph, everything is captured as pixels or on film: the foreground, the background, the subject, and the surroundings. The picture is filled from one edge to the other, top to bottom. With a drawing it’s simpler. You can decide then and there what’s important and what’s not.

  This is part of the narrative power of drawings: lines are denser in places that are important to the artist, and what is not important can simply be left out. Drawing creates more than depth of focus—it allows insignificant things to disappear and conjures significant things out of nowhere.

  Letting imagination complete the picture

  When we talk about drawing, we have to spend a few moments discussing the white of the paper. “Empty” space is crucial, because the viewer’s imagination fills up the area surrounding your drawing.

  We all know what a sidewalk, the surface of a wall, or a cloud looks like and that is why we do not normally notice these things as readily as we notice special aspects of a place. This is why pictures work in isolation, without making us ask about the surroundings. The white area in a drawing is the world that viewers complete in their minds. You can throw single aspects of a stroll outdoors on the paper and still be certain that they will be understood. The drawings are the moments that stay in our memory; the white areas are the everyday things we don’t notice.

  Therefore, as an artist you should create focal points and show only some aspects of a place—the viewer’s imagination will fill in every
thing that’s missing in the surrounding world.

  Drawing the invisible

  As every child knows, you can draw the sun’s rays. Of course, if we look closely, we see that no lines are emitting from that star. The sun is merely a bright ball in the sky. We nevertheless accept the rays in a drawing without objection as well as the wavy lines rising from a drawn sausage. We know right away that they mean odor or heat.

  Of course, you can write next to a figure, “He is moving,” but you can also draw two lines. The viewer will know that they stand for motion. Our culture has agreed upon a visual vocabulary. Arrows, speech bubbles, punctuation marks, and similar are also part of this visual language. So feel free to use the respective abbreviations; use the cartoon vocabulary.

  Tip:

  Attempt to find your own solutions, Invent new expressions! Perhaps noise can be drawn as a pattern or sadness as hatching?

  Shot settings and westerns

  If you can learn one thing from western movies, it’s how to draw.

  Westerns can be used to explain how one of the most elementary techniques in drawing works: shot settings. It’s all quite simple. Complicated-sounding terms like long shot, knee shot, and extreme close-up mean nothing more than the distance between the viewer and the subject, and therefore how big the subject is in a drawing.