Hi guys! Today we're going to actually practice a very special technique. That technique is called sighting.
Sighting is a really interesting drawing technique that goes back all the way to the 15th century, back to the renaissance. You know, think of Mona Lisa and all those great master painters. And it's really not that difficult.
It does take a little bit of practice, but it's a lot easier to see someone do it before you actually try it yourself. And instead of me doing it in class as a simple demonstration with all of you crowded around me, It'd probably be simple if I gave you sort of an up-close-and-personal look at how it works. And then that way, when I upload this to my website, you guys can watch it numerous times until you get good at it.
So what I want you to do is to watch carefully. You're probably wondering why I'm staring at three gourds and Mr. Treiner's hands are shaking a lot. But I promise this will make sense because we're going to use these three gourds as an example of what we're going to do. So take a look at those three shapes just for a second.
And if you look, not only can you see some of the things we've already talked about in class, like cast shadows, You can see that there are obviously different values, or you see shading. You probably even see some glare marks. It might even look like little white marks across the front of the sort of squatty, fat gourd that's off to my left. But you're also going to notice that obviously one gourd is dramatically larger than the other.
The problem becomes when you start to draw is that sometimes it's hard to make sure that they are in proportion to each other. In other words, you want one to definitely look much bigger than the other. Well, if you use this simple technique of sighting, it actually becomes a lot easier. So here's what's going to happen.
I'm going to show you how this works and then I'm going to draw down on my white sheet of paper and then I'm going to ask you to give this same idea a try with the still light that's sitting up in the middle of your table. So follow along carefully and I think you'll be pretty successful. Okay, I think we're ready to try to give this sighting technique a try.
So, you've had a few minutes to take a look at the gourds. You can see all the details that we've talked about that are there. But for now, we want to just focus on getting some preliminary sketches. So, I've already done one already, and you can see my three boxes that I've got set up there. And any time that I'm drawing from real life, or I'm drawing an idea or a concept for any of my paintings, we just happen to be in my studio right now, so you can see some of the paintings on the wall.
Any time that I'm working in my studio, any time that I'm working on ideas, I'm always starting with three quick sort of informal preliminary sketches. It becomes really important to understand that technique of citing. So let's give that a try. So I'm going to use a couple tools.
I'm going to use a pencil. Now you're saying, big surprise, Mr. Schreiner, you're going to use it to draw with. No, I'm actually going to use it as a measuring tool. I'm going to use my thumb, and I'm going to use my fully extended arm.
Big thing here, gang, is you want the arm to be fully extended. That means your elbow shouldn't be bent, and you should have your arm fully locked so that your elbow feels sort of locked in place so that that measurement won't ever change. So what I'm going to do is I want to make sure that I can get my drawing correct. in proportion and I'm going to use that sighting technique. So I'm going to take the tip of my pencil, the tip that's sharpened, and I'm going to put it, and we'll use the green gourd for our example, and I'm going to put it at the widest part of that gourd.
So you'll notice that the tip of my pencil again is at the widest part of my gourd, sort of its belly. And I'm going to take my thumb, and I'm going to actually put it at what I perceive to be the other end of the gourd. So from your vantage point, you can probably see the tip of the pencil at the widest part of the gourd, and you can see my thumb sort of marking off the other part. And if my hand weren't so shaky, you could probably see it even clearer. So there is what I perceive to be the measurement of that gourd.
I'm going to now take that measurement, and I want to use it. And I'm not going to move my thumb, because I want to make sure I keep it. keep that measurement and I'm going to measure it against the other gourd.
So if you look there, I'm now going to put my thumb at what's the other end of the orange wide fat sort of squatty gourd and you're going to see that clearly my pencil tip doesn't come to the end of that gourd. So what that tells me is that this green gourd is not as wide as that other gourd. Really Mr. Turner, that's pretty obvious. I think we could figure that out on your own. Yes, you're right, you could if you're all pretty brilliant.
But the part that most people struggle with is that Not only is it wider than the gourd, well how much wider? Well, this gourd is one and a half widths longer than the green gourd. So I've still got that same measurement. Notice my thumb hasn't moved. And that is the width of that gourd.
And now I'm going to use it to compare and measure the other one. One and a half. So I now know that when I go down to draw for my first time, and I draw my gourds, I'm going to actually just set up and draw. draw the first green gourd. I don't have to be in any kind of hurry.
I'm not going to make it super perfect. I'm going to do a super, super sketchy version of it. It's at a slight tilt, so I want it to be tilted. And I'm going to put in the second gourd.
I'm not too worried right now about sighting. I just want to get in some basic shape. So to me it looks sort of like an oval. So I'm going to lay that oval shape out. Now I'm going to take and I'm going to measure because I know that That gourd up there is one of my pencil lengths if I mark it and I know that it goes across one and a half times than this one.
So now I'm going to take and I'm going to use that same idea and I'm going to put the tip of my pencil at the widest point. part of that gourd and I'm going to put my thumb at the other end of it and I'm now going to compare it to this one. So I'm going to now put the tip of my thumb, the end of my thumb at the end of that other gourd that was on my left, the orange one, and sometimes I actually take my thumb and I'm going pencil and I make a little temporary mark.
Now I'm going to move my thumb over and what you should be able to see, if I weren't that shaky, is that my pencil again is one and a half pencil lengths long. So that means both of those gourds are in proportion to the gourds that we see up there. Well I want to get the third one in and I want to do a very similar technique. So again, I'm not going to worry too much about now about getting it too perfect.
I just want to draw what I'm seeing. So I'm going to take the first real quickly and I'm going to draw a circle very sketchily so I'm going to overly type circle and I'm going to draw what I think I'm going to call like a little tail to it almost looks like a light bulb sitting there and I want to measure well so first I need to go up here remember what I did tip of my pencil at the widest part of the gourd my arm is fully extended my elbow is locked and I'm going to put my thumb at the other end of the widest part of that gourd and now I'm going to go down take that same measure measurement, and I'm going to measure across. One and a half. So it just happens to turn out that both of the smaller orange gourds are exactly one and a half pencil lengths compared to the green gourd, which again sends me the same message here.
So if I measure my, what would be my green gourd, and I'm going to measure across to the widest part, one and a half. So now I know that all three gourds are equal. are in correct proportion because I've sighted them. If you look up above, I took that sighting idea, that sighting technique, and I just took it that step further and I started shading and adding detail. So I looked at the cast shadow that I saw on it, you can see it in both, and I started shading and putting in dark areas.
And sometimes I actually put the cast shadows in before I do anything else because it helps anchor the object. It makes it feel like it's centered, it makes it feel like it's really centered. sitting on the table.
And if you really look, and you can see that on the still life that's sitting there, there's actually a primary cast shadow and a secondary cast shadow. Sometimes, or a lot of times, there's actually more than one light shining down on objects. So you're going to get that cast shadow from the light that's closest to it.
So if you look at my still life, you can see the darkest shadow right here and right here. But then probably out here, you can see this slightly lighter shadow that looks like a lighter gray. So in my drawing, I try to show both of those too.
I show a really dark one by pressing really dark. with my pencil. So I get it to be charcoal black.
And you can see that under this one. But then I also try to get the secondary shadow. A really soft light one that seems out there. I also try to get the line of the table or the poster board or whatever it is that's sitting there. Because I want it to feel like it's anchored on the table.
So it's the same idea here. I would take and start to add detail. I might add a little bit of shading.
This is just so that I have a real quick informal sketch. Nothing fancy. This is never going to be something that shows up in any case. art show. It's never going to show up as a grade for anybody other than to see that you know how to sight.
So what I want you to do is I want you to try the very same thing. I want you to see if you can practice your sighting technique and then we're going to come back together and see how well you did.