OUR DRAWING LESSON

Taranaki Daily News, 6 October 1934, Page 21 (Supplement)

OUR DRAWING LESSON

A COLOURED CHALK PICTURE. Would you like to know how to make gay coloured chalk pictures? You would? I thought so! And this , week, we’ll see how to set about it. Besides your sketchbook and pencil, you will need some sheets of pale brown or grey paper with a roughish surface—ordinary wrappingpaper will do very well—a stick of < charcoal, and a box of soft coloured chalks. Be sure not to get the hard, greasy kind. You must have the soft pastel variety, but you can buy a nice little box, containing all the colours you need, for sixpence or so. What are you going to choose for your subject? The best fun, I think, is to go into the country on your next half-holi-day, and make a landscape sketch. Don’t try anything ambitious to begin with, for quite a simple scene will make an attractive subject. A sloping green field, perhaps, with some flowers growing in the foreground, a hedge at the back, a cottage roof, and some big trees —that’s the sort of thing ■ to start on. When you have chosen your view, you must walk all round until you find the best place from which to see it. This is called the “composition,” and is very important. You see, unless you have studied it, and realised the reason for it, you can’t compose your pictures well. Picture-making of .any kind is only pattern-making, after all, .and if you always think of it in .this way you will find it much easier to arrange the various shapes before you on your paper or in your sketch-book. It’s a help, too, to make a set of tiny “thumbnail sketches” in pencil cf the various viewpoints, so that you can compare them with each other, and see at a glance which is the best one. Having chosen your view, block it on to your paper carefully with charcoal. Now you’re ready to start the colouring. Rough in all the big masses of colour first to get the general tone of the picture. Don’t finish one corner first, and then move on to something else, but try to keep it all going at once. Begin with the sky, massing it in with light blue, and block in any clouds with white. The trees are put in with dark blue first, and the greens and yellows are added later. Hedges and fields are also blocked in with blue to start with; it makes ‘i solid foundation for the lighter shades which are added afterwards. The cottage or barn in the picture will probably have a red roof, so put this in next. Now you’re ready to make the picture Icok more realistic. 'The sky is nearly always a little duller - near, the horizon than it is right above your head, so show this by working in some pink and pale yellow, and making the upper part of the sky the full blue. Shade off the clouds at their edges, and work in a little pink, and mauve to give them roundness. This is all we have space for this week, but there is plenty for you to be getting on with, isn’t there? Next week we’ll see how to finish the picture. In the meantime you can be practising blocking-in and composition sketches. Goblin Artist,