From the course: Figure Drawing: Tonal Rendering

Unlock the full course today

Join today to access over 22,500 courses taught by industry experts or purchase this course individually.

Creating a five-part tonal gradient

Creating a five-part tonal gradient

From the course: Figure Drawing: Tonal Rendering

Start my 1-month free trial

Creating a five-part tonal gradient

- [Instructor] Unless we realize the polarities of our lights and darks as they wrap around a form, our midtones won't achieve the variety we need to render dimensionally. In this great page of sketches by Pontormo, what's immediately evident are the layers of searching that many artists generate in creating imagery. Don't be too quick to erase your sketchy marks, they're often beautiful remnants of your drawing process. On the right side, here, of this drawing, right there, you can just make out this figure, which is really faintly rendered, and then just next to it, right here, you can see the same figure, but with much more dramatic tonal rendering. So, how do we get there? How do we move our drawings from flat and linear to round and luminous? Well first we have to build a figure from structure to volume. So thinking again, what the limbs are doing, thinking about what's happening beneath the skin, the spine, the hips, the egg shapes that create the torso, and the region of the…

Contents