Subtractive Drawing

Materials: Substrate (Choose One): Strathmore Drawing Paper, Stonehenge, Rives BFK, Bristol Medium (Charcoal or Graphite): Charcoal: Powdered Charcoal, Vine Charcoal, Charcoal Pencils (hard, medium & soft) Graphite: Powdered Graphite, Graphite Sticks, Graphite Pencils (a range from 2H to 4B) Erasures: Kneaded Erasure, Stick Erasure(s), White (Mars) Erasure, Pink Pearl Erasure Blending Tools (optional): Brushes (range of sizes), Paper Towel 

Toning the paper: There are a variety of ways to tone your paper. The only goal when applying your tone is to create a tone that you then can erase out of. If you are using a stick medium to tone your paper, drag the medium on it’s long edge to create large sweeping marks. You can then even the tone using brushes or a paper towel. If you are using a powdered medium, lay your paper horizontally, pour a small amount onto the paper, and brush it around. You can decide to cover the entire paper with medium, or to only tone the areas you wish to draw in (see example of Henry Yan below). Think about the overall tone that you want your drawing to have. You may decide that you want either a darker, medium, or lighter tonal value in your drawing, keep this in mind as you are laying down your base tonal layer. 

Map Out Your Drawing: Once you have toned your paper, use what you know of sighting and straight-line construction, to sight your object(s) onto your paper. Keep composition in mind with regard to the size of your paper. Be sure to map out the shadow structures as well as the outer contours. ** Use a forgivable drawing medium to map out your drawing. By forgivable, I mean, something that can be easily smudged away if the drawing is incorrect. For charcoal drawings, you can use vine charcoal, and for graphite drawings, you can use any H pencil. 

Erasing: Once you have mapped out enough information – having correct proportion and mapped out value structure – you can then begin the erasure process. First, identify the brightest areas on your object(s) (squinting your eyes can help). Using a variety of erasures, you can begin to lightly erase the brightest areas. Keep the terms “general to specific” in mind when laying down your initial light areas. ** It is easy to overuse the erasure. You want to make sure to use the gray of the paper as much as possible. Constantly be looking from your drawing to the object(s) to see where the grey of the paper should be left alone. Often times (depending on the darkness of your toned paper) reflective light can be left as the grey of the paper. 

Laying Darker Values: Once you have erased the general light areas of the object(s), you can then begin to assess core shadows. Using a charcoal pencil, vine charcoal, or if you are working in graphite, a graphite pencil or stick start to draw in the core shadows. You can use directional mark making to describe how light moves across the form. You can also use a layering of different directional marks to create a smoother value structure. Working general to specific, lay down initial core shadows and then go back to address detail. 

*Once you have laid down initial lights and darks, you should constantly be working in both the light and dark areas of the drawing, working the entire surface at once. Don’t immerse yourself in the details of the drawing right away, forgetting about the drawing as a whole. 

Finishing: Subtractive drawings normally have more medium on the surface than your additive drawings. Especially if you are working with charcoal, you may want to seal your surface with workable fixative.