Ronnie Tucker – Pet, Wildlife & Portrait Artist.

Where It All Happens – The Drawing Board

Jul 19, 2010 art

Today I thought I’d just post a couple of pictures of my drawing board (since I cleaned it up) and the ‘tools of the trade’.

All nice and clean! OK, apart from the ink marks, but they just won’t come out, I’ve tried… trust me!

On the window ledge is my little lamp, I only use it to light a subject in a still life. On the right-hand side of the ledge is my mannequin, it’s only about 10″ tall and really handy for when I need to draw a pose or sometimes I light it with the lamp and do a quick sketch of it for practice. On the board is some A3 paper, to give you  sense of scale… it’s a pretty big board. Top left of it is my masking fluid (white top) ink (black top) then my pencils and ink brushes. Right side of the board is my (homemade) tub of charcoal dust, pencils and charcoal, pastels, pastel pencils then more pastels.

Hey, look, it’s my pencils and what-not! From top to bottom:

• Pipette (for moving ink from bottle to brush pen)
• Masking fluid (for watercolour/ink stuff)
• Black ink
• Sandpaper (for sharpening pastels/pencils/eraser)
• ink pens
• erasers (rubber and kneadable)
• technical pencil
• masking fluid brush
• couple more brushes for blending charcoal/pencil
• ink brush (put ink in the reservoir then effectively paint with it)
• one more ink pen
• (homemade) tortillon for blending charcoal/pencil
• dip pen (for ye olde style inking)
• another blending brush
• another ink pen
• and, last but not least, my battery powered eraser.

Ooh, pastels!

Top left is my tub of charcoal dust, made by rubbing a piece of dark charcoal over my sandpaper and letting the dust fall into the rub, perfect for rubbing in to the paper to give me a neutral tone to start with. Top right is my tin of pencils (the six pencils you see are red, white, charcoal then three graphite pencils) by Derwent. It also has three sticks of graphite (top of the tin) and three stick of charcoal (bottom of the tin). Beside the tin of pencils are some of my pieces of pastel. The thin square sticks are hard pastel, the others are soft pastel. Middle of the photo is my tin of pastel pencils, also by Derwent, these are various colours and are quite hard, good for doing detailed work. Bottom of the photo is some more hard and soft pastels.

So there you go, a quick look behind the scenes of where my pastel and pencil drawings come from!

Tags: blending, brush, brush pen, charcoal, dip, eraser, graphite, hard, ink, kneadable, lead, mannequin, pastel, pen, pencil, rubber, soft, studio

Drawing… with an eraser?

Dec 28, 2009 art, pencil

a Kneadable/Putty Eraser

Drawing with an eraser may sound like an oxymoron, but it is possible.

In the drawing below, Allosaurus, I’ve used smeared graphite for a background then added more smeared graphite to the subject to create the shadow areas, the residue graphite that is still on the cloth is then rubbed in to the mid-tone areas. Any areas that need to be highlights are ‘drawn’ with the putty eraser (more on kneadable/putty erasers here), effetively removing the mid/dark-tone graphite.

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Tags: allosaurus, dino, dinosaur, drawing, eraser, graphite, kneadable, pencil, plastic, putty, reptile, sketch

Kneadable (putty) eraser, or plastic eraser. Is there a difference?

Dec 28, 2009 art, pencil

An ordinary plastic eraser

I’m sure there are many times when you’ve been drawing/sketching and had to erase a large area, or even redo an piece several times. All that rubbing and blowing off the pieces of eraser that are in your way… not the most pleasant of tasks.

Plastic erasers, while they do the job, can seriously damage the surface you’re drawing on as they are quite stiff. They also disintegrate as you use them leaving all those tiny bits of eraser on the page.

There has to be a better way… and there is!

a Kneadable/Putty Eraser

A kneadable (or putty) eraser is the exact opposite of a plastic eraser – it’s flexible and doesn’t disintegrate, nor does it damage your drawing surface.

The idea behind the putty rubber is quite simple, think of it as being a soft, pliable, eraser, similar in texture to Blu-Tac, that you can shape. This means that not only can you erase large areas, and nothing will break off, but you can shape the putty to be more precise in what you’re erasing.

You can even ‘draw’ with the putty eraser by removing pencil to create negative shapes, but I’ll write a separate article on that.

To continue using the putty rubber, you simply stretch and manipulate it until you have a clean piece to work with, which won’t last forever as eventually you’ll have a black putty eraser with no clean parts!

At that point you have to erase it, and buy a new one…

Tags: drawing, eraser, graphite, kneadable, pencil, plastic, putty, rubber, sketch, sketching