Drawing a BARN, Rural Scene - How I use GRAPHITE!

In this short video, I'm going to show you how I drew this barn scene, together with the materials that I used, as well as the design process. This is Sketch Endeavor. Roll that intro. Welcome to Sketch Endeavor. My name's Andrew, and if you're new here, Sketch Endeavor is all about the daily habit of drawing, forcing ourselves to show up every day in either the sketchbook or at the drawing board to try to develop our drawing skills. Now, drawing and painting go hand in hand, and if we have a lacking in our drawing ability, it's going to show up at the easel. So, by having this practice of drawing as often as possible, we're going to start to see improvements across the board in our creative journey. Now, in this video, we're going to revisit a familiar subject that you may have seen on my channel before, and it's this barn found in a town called Guadaljuna, very close to where I live. There is so much to this subject. I find it so interesting, from the textures in the barn itself to that landscape that falls away into the distance. I also love the trees, and there's so many elements here to make a really interesting composition. I'm not done with this idea quite yet. I think I can get a really great painting out of it. So, let's hit the drawing board and see what kind of designs we can come up with, and I'll start sketching some thumbnails to work out my thoughts around this scene. Now, I always start with thumbnail sketches. This really helps me clarify my thought process and work out everything I want to put in the composition. Now, as usual, I've got a little bit of photographic reference on the iPad in front of me, and that's going to inspire some of these thumbnail sketches, and I'm going to put some of my favorite elements that I've seen in those photographs into these little thumbnails. Now, I'm not getting too bogged down in any detail at all. I know I keep saying that, but it's best in the beginning stages of any drawing or painting that we start general and work our way towards more refinement. I'm trying to form a unique composition that really is going beyond anything that I see in the reference that I have in front of me. So, whenever we do this, we go off script. We also can run into issues. So, this part of the process of working in thumbnails in the sketchbook helps me iron out all of those creases, all of those potential problems, which could be a headache when I get into the final painting. My favorite place to do these thumbnail designs is in a sketchbook, which is pretty much just cartridge paper, and I'm using a Palomino black wing, which is one of my favorite pencils for this type of sketching. I can lay down a lot of tone really quickly, and again, I'm not worried about any sharp lines or any hatching or any details at this stage. Each one of these drawings is going to take me around about five to ten minutes. It will give me enough information to inform the next drawing. So, I'm not simply repeating the same scene over and over and over again. Rather, I'm making small changes to the scene as I progress with this series of designs. Now, if you're really paying attention, you'll notice that that barn is shifting location from the right to the left, and I'm starting to build up the trees behind the barn to offer some contrast. Also, I have some sheep that I'm thinking about putting somewhere in the scene, and they've moved their way from the foreground into the background. Now, I should note that with these sketches, there's no one correct design. I'm just feeling my way along for whatever feels right, whatever gives me the right impression of this and really pushes the buttons for me. Now, after about an hour to an hour and a half, I've got a full page in the sketchbook and a really clear idea about what I want this design to look like. So, let's do a bigger drawing. I've now got a much bigger sketchbook out, and I'm going to be referring to that page full of thumbnail sketches and really focusing on that last thumbnail, which I felt nailed the composition. Here in this drawing, I'm going for a bit more refinement. Still, it's not going to be a finished rendering. It's going to be plenty sketchy enough, but it just has to have some more information to inform the next part of the process, which is going to be a much more detailed rendering. Now, you might be thinking that this is a really laborious process. I mean, who would go to this kind of effort just to design a painting? Well, in my experience of working over the years, I found that I've gotten bogged down in abortive work, and I finally had enough of it of turning canvases against the wall or even getting rid of work, and I just went, you know what? I really want to come up with something that is consistently good, and the only way I could do that was to put in the hard yards at the start of the process. I'm a big fan of the saying that we all have 20-20 vision and hindsight, and so I had this idea. What if every work of art that I did was done with hindsight? What if I've already been there before and saw all of those pitfalls so that I could avoid them when it comes time to do the bigger painting? Well, look, that's the idea anyway. I'm not saying I get it right every single time and every single painting that I do is knocked out of the park, but what I do know is they're a lot better for doing this kind of work as opposed to having not done it at all. It always makes a difference putting in the effort at the very beginning of the process. Now, of course, there is also the added benefit of putting the time in at the sketchbook. I've noticed a massive improvement in my drawings as I've dedicated time each day to sketch endeavor. Now, again, of course, I haven't made every single day, but that's the goal, right? We try to strive for that daily habit, showing up as often as we can, and then that builds a little bit of momentum. The more time we put in, the better it gets. The more we start to see results, so the more we want to put in the time, and it starts having this cumulative effect, and you'll find that after a while of doing this and dedicating yourself to that practice, you do become quite addicted to it. I'm not quite the same if I don't have my daily sketching time, and again, as you know, I don't have a perfect attendance record with Sketch Endeavor, but I try, and I think that's the main thing, is that we really try to put in that effort and show up as often as we can. But so far, so good. I'm starting to see results. I hope you and your Sketch Endeavor journey, you're starting to see results too. So now I'm drawing on some of that Dreadnought Gray card made by Camford that you would have seen in some of my other Sketch Endeavor videos, and I'm starting things off really nice and light. This is the final rendering, my final design, if you will, before I get on with my bigger painting of this scene. I'm laying in all of my construction lines so that they're easily erased, and now I have a really clear guide for where to put the tone. And for this, I'm going to be using again some of that graphite powder. Now this graphite powder is not store-bought or anything, it is just simply the result of shaving down my pencils and sanding them on a bit of sandpaper. I never throw that stuff in the trash, it is absolute gold. So this stuff is really good for knocking in some nice blocks of tone with the end of a paper stump. I'm not going to get too much detail out of the end of that paper stump, there's only so much precision here that that's going to allow. But as I start to knock in this tone, what it's doing is providing a really solid base to go back and apply some hatching over the top of. Again, it's kind of like the painting process or the loose sketching process. We're starting really general, we're making big bold marks, and then we're refining as we go along. I am, however, paying very close attention to the pressure of the stump. The harder I press and the more heavily that paper stump is laden with graphite powder, the darker the marks are going to be. It has taken a little while and I'm still working out the correct pressure and the correct angle at which to hold that stump in order to make particular marks. It does take some feeling your way around, but having drawn this way now for the last couple of months, I'm starting to get my head around the process. Now it's important to follow those construction lines as closely as I can. You do run the risk of losing them at a certain point. It's also really important that when you're using a light or a harder lead when drawing in that construction line, that you don't press too hard because otherwise it's going to show up as a lighter mark. You will actually physically emboss your paper, which can be a bit of a disaster further down the track if you want to lay in deeper tone. So I use an H pencil for those initial marks and I'm pressing really lightly. Now once I have my tones established, I'm going to go about laying down some hatching over the top. This is where the image starts to really get quite refined indeed. It's almost like a camera lens focusing. When you're looking at a landscape and it's out of focus and really blurry, this is a process of tightening up that focus ring and bringing everything into sharp detail. Here I'm using a 0.5 millimeter lead and this is HB, so I'm not going to be able to get too much deep tone out of the end of this pencil. I'm going to try to keep everything relatively light here in the background, knowing that deeper darker tone and sharper detail is going to draw the eye towards the foreground. So I must reserve that depth and that darkness for whatever is immediately in front of the viewer. And you'll remember from previous drawings that it's a matter of creating some sense of three-dimensional space. If we're playing with only a certain range of tones in mind, then we know there's only so light we can go and so dark we can go. So it makes good sense to reserve those tones for the immediate foreground where they're really going to have quite an impact. I love using artistic license when it comes to a compositional design. This tree here was not butted up against the barn at all, but I thought it'd be really interesting way to break the edge of it and bleed it into its background, have it emerge out of the scene a little bit more. And here I'm using a mono zero eraser to lift out some of those branches and then going back and establishing the tops of the tree with that 0.5 HB lead. I will come back with a darker B and 2B pencil leads for this part of the process as we're starting to bring those tiers of depth forward. One of the things that I've been very conscious of and really enjoying is this hand-eye coordination that is starting to develop. I think I must be getting quite sensitive to that. I feel that it is getting better. When I look at the drawings when I first started my Sketch Endeavor journey, I'm noticing quite an improvement to what I see now. And I know that this is not as far as I could go. There's so much more room to develop and grow, but this is part of what the daily habit is bringing, is constantly pushing me to improve, to just try and get better and better and better. And again, that hand-eye coordination, the more you do it, the more that develops and the better it gets. The more you find it easier to have a pencil in your hand and the more dexterity and versatility you have with the types of marks you can make. It all comes down to just showing up and doing it. It's been awesome to see how many people are taking part in the Sketch Endeavor challenge as well. This is the daily habit of drawing. It's no set time period, it's just showing up every day as often as possible. I want to give a couple of shout-outs to some people that I've been following pretty closely. One of them is Thoti Haksa Art on Instagram. Make sure you check out his work. I'm really blown away by this kid's skills. He's got some amazing work on his profile, but this picture that he's done of this portrait particularly caught my eye. I just love it. So Thoti, well done, mate. Keep going and keep posting drawings and keep using that hashtag, Sketch Endeavor. And another shout-out, somebody who is actually very special to me, very dear to my heart, a good friend from back in my Perth days when I lived in Western Australia, Gabriel Dixon. Make sure you follow Gabriel on Instagram. I saw this drawing here of these elephants drawn in ink and I just loved it. Now you might remember Gabriel's husband, Colin Dixon, from the podcast that I recorded a while ago. I think it was episode 11, Chat with a Gallery Owner. So if you have a listen to that conversation, you'll get a little bit of an insight into how I know Colin and Gabriel, beautiful people. Shout-out to both of you guys. But Gay, I just love what you're doing and I'm loving some of these animals that are resulting from your African experience. It's just awesome. Keep going. I'll put a link to that podcast that I recorded with Colin in the description down below. So if you want to hear that chat and you haven't already checked out the Creative Endeavor podcast, make sure you do. Find that link down below. And if you want to get a shout-out at some point and you never know, your name might be picked out of the hat, make sure you use that hashtag, Sketch Endeavor, when you're posting your work to Instagram. I'm following that hashtag pretty closely. Now back to the drawing. You may have noticed here that the pencil has changed. I'm now using a Staedtler black. These have got a bit of carbon mixed in with that graphite and it achieves a much deeper black, as you can see here, than you could get with just an ordinary graphite pencil. I reserve this towards the end of the process when I really want to draw out some deeper tone or create some more sharpness. Again, we can overdo it. So here in this mid-ground where the barn is, I want to make sure it doesn't go so black that it starts to compete with the immediate foreground. I still do want to have some depth in the shadows amongst the grass and the water right in the immediate foreground. I really enjoy how each drawing that I do builds on the next and then the next and then the next. You start to see things in a progression and you start building upon those experiences. So when you start to draw like this, you can really see the road ahead and start planning ahead for those eventualities and start thinking tonally as I've been speaking to you throughout this demonstration. I am reserving some areas of the paper that I want to come back and add some highlights to. So I'm making sure that I try to keep things as clean as possible. Unnecessary smudging can really damage this effect, so I'm using a clean sheet of paper as a shield for my hand so that I don't smudge out any of that detail and really rub the graphite into the paper. The graphite has a tendency to repel itself, but also any white marks that I want to add to the surface. Now drawing grass like this is pretty interesting. It's actually a process of drawing where the blades of grass aren't and trying to leave a negative shape of some lighter paper showing through for where you want those blades of grass to be. It's a weird mind flip and I'm still getting my head around it, but so far so good. I'll go back in there and add some more deep tone as I continue. I had somebody point out to me recently that I often put these streams and waterways or a path or something leading into the composition. This is a compositional device that I absolutely love. It allows your viewer access to the picture. They feel like they're being drawn into it. So whether it's a road, a path, a sidewalk, a street, or a stream like what you see here, it simply just gives this feeling in the composition like you're being drawn into it and you follow it like a path. So I imagine here that you'll start off in the foreground here of this painting, swing around to the right, and then to the left to that barn which is the central focus point of this composition. So it's a great compositional device. I really encourage you to use it if you haven't used this already. It's a great way to set up a vector from the outset and lead that eye into your painting or into your drawing. At this stage I'm using B's and 2B's in a 0.5 mechanical pencil. It's giving me some real sharpness down here in the foreground. I can go back and press that graphite in and get some deep tone, but I am reserving some places for that carbon black pencil to really get some nice dark black shadows in and amongst this grass. I love this effect of the multitude of marks. The more you add to the surface, the better it looks. Sometimes I got quite disillusioned with drawings, but I found if I just stuck with it, if I just kept going and kept adding to it, then yeah sure maybe I would run the risk of overdoing it, but more often than not I'd end up much happier as a result of just hanging in there. Now drawing water can be quite tricky. I'm just focusing on these clumps of grass and how they're going to reflect directly in that surface of water. I do have another drawing coming out soon where I'm going to talk about how to draw clear water that you can actually see through and also see some reflections in. So stay tuned for that one. Now it's time for those highlights. This is what I've been waiting for. This is at the very end of the process and why I love working on toned paper. Not only can we see the depth in those shadows, but we can also start to see the brilliant contrast between this white pencil and that gray toned paper. I'm using a General's white charcoal pencil and this is really working quite well if I just concentrate on one little mark at a time. I had tendency in the past to go overboard with the mark making and also applying too much pressure to the surface and that resulted in a lot of broken pencils. So just a light touch will do, but you can go back over the mark again and again to build up more tone, more of that white. And as you can see that works quite well for applying some sunlight to the side of these sheep and it starts lifting them away from the surface of the paper. So it's taken me several hours now to reach this point, but I'm so glad that I put in the effort because now I have a really clear idea of what this composition is going to look like when it comes time to paint it. And also I've had the opportunity to practice my techniques and again the more we practice and the more we show up for our sketch endeavor time, the better this gets. I can't wait to see what else I'm going to be able to do on my sketching journey. This is such a personal thing. I'm only in competition with myself, so I'm really concerned with showing up and being the best that I can be. It's not about comparing myself to anybody else. It's just about showing up, putting in the time and seeing some sort of improvement. Now if you've enjoyed the process of this drawing and like the finished result, then stay tuned because on my channel very soon I'm going to have a tutorial on how I'm going to paint this scene. Now I've received a few questions that I'll just answer right now in regards to some of the materials that I've been using. If ever you have a question about the paper or the pencils, you can always find that information in the links down below. But a lot of people have been asking me about these cool pencil racks that I have on my drawing board and the drawing board itself. Well the pencil racks were actually made by a good buddy of mine, Mike Norris, who's a renowned New Zealand wildlife sculptor. And he whipped these up for me on his 3D router and I really appreciate it. He made me one and then I just had to have more and put all my pencils out. This is a really good way for me to stay organized at the drawing board. So a big thank you to Mike for making these for me. I really appreciate it, bud. Now my drawing board was actually found at an antique store that was going out of business and I got it for an absolute steal. It's a French drawing board from the 1930s. It's fully articulated and I can adjust this at any position to make it easier for filming these demonstrations but also just easier to work at. I absolutely love this. It's one of my favorite things in my studio. Now it might be hard for you to find an antique French drawing table. They're as rare as hen's teeth. But there are so many different options out there that you can use and I might even do a demo at one point about how you might be able to build your own drawing table and set this up at your working desk or the kitchen table. So the drawing board itself is not terribly important but I love it and it does help me with my drawing process. Now I just have a quick announcement to make. If you're not already subscribed through my website, make sure you do so. It's absolutely free to subscribe. Simply go to my website andrewtichler.com slash subscribe into your name and email address there and I'll be in touch with you quite regularly. Now the reason you might want to do this is because I have a huge tutorial about to drop and my subscribers through my website are going to get a free copy of my epic Kimberly landscape painting tutorial when they buy the epic Milford Sound tutorial which is about to land. Now this combined is 10 hours of painting footage where I talk openly about the techniques that I use here in the studio to create my landscape paintings. So if that sounds like something that you're going to be interested in then you can find that link in the description down below or go to andrewtichler.com slash subscribe. Now just a quick note if you're one of those future people watching this video, that Kimberly tutorial is only available for a limited time and only available to subscribers. So if you're watching this at some point in the future make sure you check my website. I might have a new tutorial available but if you're subscribed you're always going to be amongst the first to know. Now thank you again for watching. Please click that like button if you enjoyed this episode of Sketch Endeavor and leave me a comment down below. As always you can find me on Instagram and Facebook but again most important make sure you subscribe through my website at andrewtichler.com slash subscribe. Thank you so much for stopping by. I'll see you again soon.