Nandan Nair

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Have you ever taken a minute to observe the world around you? If you did, you may have noticed that everything we see is made of lines and shapes. A line drawing utilizes these basic qualities, and displays this using variations of black and white. The thickness of the lines are used to make up for the lack of color.

In art class, we learnt about techniques artists use to make different kinds of artwork. To practice these, we each made a line drawing. We first found a line drawing from the internet which we liked. Then, we printed a picture of it and drew it from observation.

The drawing I made was of a hand grabbing money. I chose it because I liked how it was simple, yet complex. I also liked the challenge that the thickness of the lines provided, as this was critical to ensuring that the drawing came out well.

There are many techniques which I used to draw this. One of the techniques I used was crosshairs, in which I made a grid on both my reference and my paper, and filled in each square of my paper with what the corresponding square on the reference had. Along with this, I turned the image upside down and drew it. I also used various tools, such as a 4B pencil (a pencil which has softer lead than an average pencil) and a tortillon, a hollow, pencil-like object used for blending, to make the drawing further resemble the photo.

I feel that I have learned a lot from making this drawing. Among those things, I learned, or moreover proved that the first layer must always be drawn light. Otherwise, you will have a lot of trouble fixing mistakes. I also learned to use different tools together, like a 2B and 4B pencil, to improve the final outcome.