Birdhouse
This is the birdhouse I drew today. I am pretty happy with how it came out. Some of the lines could have been erased, like on the top right side and the round base (which I completely mucked up…), but a lot of the lines came out right the first time.
The shading worked out really well with this. Another reason that I like light “H” or “HB” or “H2” pencils – they shade really evenly.
My favorite part of this drawing is on the right side of the roof. The actual bird house has these drop-like things on the roof, and so on this side I tried to shade the drops to make them, not to draw lines to make them like I did on the left side. It is hard to see it in this image, but the real drawing shows those shading-for-shape drops really well. They came out almost exactly how I wanted them to.
I got to pay closer attention to shadows and highlighting in this drawing. The way shadows and highlights appear sometimes is really wacky. It does not make sense, for example why the highlights and shadows on the round part of this bird house (the dowels, I guess, you would call them) go from very faint shadows on the left edge, to bright highlights, then bleed into the darkest shadows of the whole dowel, and then fade back to lighter shadows by the time you get to the far side. Its not supposed to be like that! It supposed to go very light, bright, very light, dark. Not very light, bright, very dark, very light.
I hope people know what I’m talking about. It you don’t, study something round in the nexy hour or day. Really look at how the light and dark parts work. I almost want to go find a science teacher to explain to me why the lightest and darkest parts on the round dowel are next to each other. But they’d probably just look at me funny.
You know you are deep into drawing when things like this really get your attention and stump you. Fortunately, I just drew it the way I saw it, and somehow it looks right. Go figure.
If anybody can tell me why the shadows go from the highlights into the darkest parts so quickly, with the medium tones on either side, I would appreciate it.
