Yesterday I spoke about the grid method of drawing and how this enabled me to sketch out a kettle with unprecedented accuracy (for me at least). In a nutshell this involves plotting a grid over the image you wish to copy and then using just such a faint grid on your drawing paper - which means that I began with an image like this:
Today then I already had a scale, contour drawing of the kettle to work with - now I wanted to add in as much shading and detail as I could capture in pencil. Having a drawing to scale really assisted me here as I was able to exactly map light and dark areas from the photo to my drawing without any mental transformation; usually the observed detail almost but doesn't quite match what I've got on paper. So with a lot of shading, smudging, rubbing out and lining in detail I ended up with this:
I have to say that it's a pretty great sketch when placed side-by-side with the picture and I guess what's nice about this is that it shows what I'm capable of if my scaled contours are accurate. For once I have no issue with proportion and that allows me to focus on more subtle problems - such as the graininess of my shading. To a degree I think that this is partially a limitation of sketching in pencil as a medium like charcoal, or watercolour, lends itself to smooth transitions much more readily. Nevertheless I plan to work further on my shading skills given the potential reward when the dimensions are appropriate.