Shaded Tonal Drawing(major project)

Grade 10 Visual Arts

A tonal drawing is a gradual, soft "blending" of dark and light areas together.

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Some drawings focus just on the dark, medium and light tones.

Some drawings have a full range of tones and use pencil marks are visible to the eye.

Some artists think the pencil mark is part of the ‘art’ of the drawing.

Some believe that the more the drawing looks like a photograph, the more impressive it is.

This technique definitely takes technical skill but it does not make the drawing more of an artwork.

But sometimes a technically brilliant drawing can be so good that it is hard to believe it isn’t a photograph.

This image has excellent lighting and a mood or attitude. These things add to the artistic quality of the drawing.

This is a good technical drawing but the white fuzzy areas can detract from the overall impact.

No… Yes…

You need to start with a strong image that has an excellent range of lights, mediums and darks. The

image should be interesting to look at.

Divide your photo into 1” squares. Then double your photo size. Draw a new square on a white piece of paper and divide the it into 2” squares. Using little round shading movements, perfectly recreate each

square. Show your first three to me.

But before you start you have to get past step # 1.

Step #1 is created to see if you can do this.

Draw a nine step grey scale. Make each step a 1”x1” square.

Show me before you start your tonal drawing.