PART 2

In the second of three articles on getting the best from your source material, Grahame Booth shows how pencil sketches can bring your subject to life

Last month when I looked at painting from photographs, I pointed out some of the limitations that make them less than perfect as resources for a painting. The major issue is the simple fact that we do not see reality the way a camera sees it and this is where a simple pencil sketch comes in, using shading to create a tonal pattern. A 2B or 3B pencil is a good choice. It is soft enough to get those rich darks but not so soft that it smudges too easily and I use the same pencil to work up my sketch to my drawing before painting. Remember that sinking feeling when looking through photographs for something to paint and finding nothing appealing even though you clearly remember how exciting the subject was? Well, the sketch allows us to record that excitement that we saw when standing in front of the subject. When sketching we can simplify, we can concentrate on a particular area and we can capture the essence of our subject. We can add elements, we can move them around and we can leave them out. The camera can’t do this. A photograph is a clinical record whereas a painting should ultimately convey the emotion we felt when observing the subject, and a sketch should provide quite a lot of that emotion. A pencil sketch has an added advantage. Because it is monochrome it will be much easier to mix colours that are suitable for the painting rather than worrying about mixing ‘correct’ colours – and how often have you been halfway through a painting when you realise the subject just isn’t right? It really is much quicker and simpler to find this out with a sketch rather than ruining that expensive sheet of watercolour paper!