Notes taken on 22 June 2024.
(Despite sharing the same title as book №1, this book is less about nature as defined as the outdoors so much as it is about nature as defined as the way things are. I definitely learned some things about traditional mediums from this!)
"The aim of drawing has never been to reproduce a photographically accurate image of nature, but to interpret nature in a creative way. Drawing is an art form that teaches you how to observe things in a sensitive way."
You must view the object as a construction whose total is more than the sum of its parts, and you must understand how the parts are related to each other. Viewing the object from all sides and studying it will help you gain insight into it. The essential idea of drawing is not to reproduce the readily discernible aspects, but to express insight into its form and structure.
Do not draw only with your hands, but use the whole upper part of your body and move your arm freely. A strong movement should go from the core of your body through your shoulder and arm to the tips of your fingers. Hold your pencil and chalk with all your fingers, not in the way you hold your fountain pen when writing. The illustration that accompanies this show a hand holding the pencil in what I assume is the classical paint brush grip. The pen rests in the crease between the tip and the middle segment of the index finger; then the middle segment of the middle, ring, and pinky fingers. The thumb presses down on the pencil above the middle and ring finger. On the whole, the hand is curled inwards.
Vary the tools you use and the size of your drawings. A larger size is better for a beginner because it teaches you to be bold. Try drawing standing up, sitting down; with the pad on your knee, on a table, against a wall, or on an easel. Pencil, pen, charcoal, and Conté crayon are all excellent tools for drawing. Be sure to use a kneaded rubber eraser rather than a normal rubber eraser to avoid smearing when using charcoal. Spray a fixative after drawing.
Warm up before drawing. Get some scratch paper and make different straight lines - horizontal, vertical, and oblique. Then draw angular shapes. Experiment with curved lines and rounded shapes. Alternate straight and curved lines in one continuous stroke (without lifting your pen from the paper). Feel the difference between them. Practice some shading! Draw a series of straight lines and notice how the surface darkens in different ways. Create a chequerboard out of different combinations of horizontal and diagonal and vertical lines of various widths and darknesses. Expand from this concept by using lines as shading to represent clouds in the sky rather than well defined by outlines. Now try using curved lines for shading.
Now, apply this exercise in lines and curves to shade simple objects. Sketch cylinders, spheres, ribbons, tubes, cubes, etc. Now shade them. Repeat the exercise, shading so closely to the contour lines that they almost disappear. Then redo the exercise without contour lines. Bring out the shapes purely through shading.
For practicing applying washes, brush on diluted ink in strips of precisely separated shades. Then create a chequerboard of tones. Follow that up with a representation of clouds in the sky.
Most buildings/furniture/utensils are combinations of elementary shapes - cube, pyramid, sphere, cylinder, and cone. Starting with the rectangular solid we can build things out of a prototypical object - for this book a "matchbook" was selected. Place two matchboxes together in all possible ways. Draw the combination's "ground plan" - the shape as seen from above. Then, the front view, the rear view, and the side view. These other views can be obtained by projecting the main lines of the ground view upwards into the side view, projecting the side view lines to the right brings the front view. The extended lines should be drawn lightly and the matchbox itself stressed with thicker lines. With this technique you should be able to draw everything both visible and non-visible for any combination of matchboxes.
With these essentials, we can move into the third dimension. Draw the ground plan at an angle and from above, marking oblique lines in place of vertical lines. Then project vertical lines out of it, setting the scene for the side and front and back views to be represented in the resulting object. As before, stress the visible form with the heavier lines and shading. The auxilliary lines show the relationships between the various parts of the object and the underlying structure. They are critical for constructing the end drawing. Continue this exercise, adding more and more matchboxes until you are satisfied with the complexity. Think about which angle shows everything most clearly or as the most interesting perspective on the object. The end goal of the exercise is to be able to think of any shape or object, and then represent it through matchboxes. Finish off by rendering irregular heaps of matchboxes.
We need to understand how a circle is altered when placed into perspective. When tilted, a circle becomes an ellipse. When viewed from the side, the circle still becomes an ellipse, but the vertices and co-vertices shift to fit the shape of a parallelogram. (I'm not entirely sure if that makes it technically more of an oval than an ellipse, or if the ellipse is, through this parallelogramisation, shrunk and rotated slightly to fit the new shape such that the actual vertices and co-vertices have rotated while the perceived vertices and co-vertices conform to the parallelogram?)
Now that you know how to correctly transform a circle into perspective, construct cylinders of different diameters and heights. As before, start with the ground plane and project upwards. After doing this enough times, you should be able to do cones and truncated cones. Be sure to try shading to confirm your understanding of the object in space. Another test of your knowledge would be to construct a ribbon in space. Check to make sure that you are properly understanding the way in which the sides of the ribbon connect. Sharp edges and angles should be expected where the ribbon overlaps itself from the perspective of the viewer.
At this point you should be able to connect the earlier exercise with matchboxes and your newfound ability to construct cylinders and cones. You should be able to separate any arbitrary object into the elementary forms which compose it. The easiest is houses and roofs. Draw houses with saddled/gabled roofs from various angles, then add annexes: garage, terrace, balcony, stairs, dormer windows, chimney. Those features can all be constructed out of cylinders, pyramids, and rectangular prisms, with various intersections thereof. You should also be able to draw a simple table with straight legs. Use the extended line technique and the oblique ground plan. With that done, you should also be able to draw a table with slanted legs, a round stool, a cup and saucer, and a coffee pot.
You now have everything you need to go on a walk with your sketchpad and train yourself by reproducing the essential elements in structurs you see on your walk. Think about the objects and their auxiliary lines - which will not be visible, but you are training yourself to be able to see them in order to better know how to construct these shapes.
Flowers can be deconstructed in much the same way as the human structures which we have already studied. Many flowers have half-globes as their foundation, with variations formed by stretching, flattening, or rolling them. Combining two or three of these modified half-globes approximates some complex flower shapes. To create the petals, cut the half globes into stars.
(Finally we arrive at an exploration of perspective. Everything drawn thus far has been parallel projection - axonometric, orthographic, oblique, skew, etc. Gerhard starts off with two point perspective, then moves on to one, skipping three entirely.) To create a perception of depth, the horizontal lines of an object will converge toward a distant point, called a vanishing point. The vertical lines will remain vertical. The essential line in perspective is the horizon, a line on which the vanishing point lies. Lines above the horizon descend towards it, and those below rise towards it. Since vrtical lines therefore become smaller as they approach the horizon, depth is achieved. For outdoors, use two vanishing points; for indoors, use one.
Start out by drawing simple and then more complicated buildings in this perspective, as well as interiors with and without furniture, entirely from your imagination. Once you have a grasp on this, go out into the world and start to recreate the buildings you see. Begin by thinking like an architect, drawing the ground plan. Then, add the most important vertices and add the roof. Only after the main part of the building is established can you begin to add balconies, stairs, doors, and windows. (Probably continuing the line that context is important for drawing.)
Contour and defining lines express not themselves, but the bodies which they bound and to which they belong. Think of these structures as three dimensional - the object between the lines.