Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction

This exercise is all about exploring the bounds of all three dimensions of space, and reinforcing the idea that you're not creating things on a flat piece of paper - your page is a window into a vast 3D world with breadth, height and depth to it.

We will be drawing arrow structures, and the process is going to involve a lot of consideration towards foreshortening in order to convey that sense of depth, with each of the first two steps focusing on how foreshortening applies to different aspects of the space around our arrows.

Start off by drawing a sort of S-curve on the page, as pictured here. As this is a fairly long, fluid, smooth stroke, you're going to want to rely on your shoulder a fair bit, and lock your wrist in place. The shoulder will (assuming you've gotten a little more comfortable with its use by using it extensively throughout the course so far) function as a sort of stabilizer, making it harder to make really tight turns, but easier to maintain a consistent trajectory.

Confidence is definitely important here - if you hesitate, your edge will wobble, and that will create erratic widening/narrowing in the eventual structure that will undermine the illusion that it exists in, and moves through, 3D space. So even if it means sacrificing the accuracy of the mark, always prioritize the confidence of the execution.

As we draw this curve, we will want to take foreshortening into consideration as we lay out its path - specifically how foreshortening applies to the "negative space" - that is, the gaps between the zigzagging areas.

As shown in this diagram, the gap closer to the viewer will be wider, but as we look farther back, it will get compressed. This can even be taken to the point of having those zigzagging sections overlap one another, which some students may feel hesitant to allow. I assure you - it's not wrong to have them overlap, it is very much the logical conclusion of those gaps compressing as far as they can.

While initially it's best to start with a simple S curve, once you get the hang of that, you can play with the arrow's path zigzagging multiple times, resulting in more gaps across which to spread that compression of space.

Next, draw the same curve a little below it that follows a similar path to the one that is already present. This won't be easy, and you'll have to force yourself to execute the mark with confidence, relying not on hesitation or being overly careful to maintain the intended path, but on that shoulder's "stabilization" effect.

As we draw this second edge, we'll want to think about how foreshortening applies to the positive space - that is, the structure of the arrow itself. This one is usually a lot easier to wrap your head around than the negative space, as it's just a matter of having the second edge sit farther from the first when closer to the viewer, and having them sit closer together farther away.

Of course, doing that in practice is less easy. As before, remember to put confidence above accuracy - it's more important that your marks are executed smoothly, than nailing the foreshortening.

The next step is to simply close off the structure. Place edges going across from the first edge to the second at the apex of every turn, as well as on one end of the arrow structure.

You can do the same thing for the other end as well, or you can draw an arrow head with a triangular structure instead. If you go this route, I recommend leveraging the ghosting method's planning phase - specifically where we place points to plot things out prior to executing the marks - to ensure that your arrow head doesn't come out lopsided.

Finally, add a little bit of hatching at the bends. Ideally hatching should flow between defined locations, rather than stopping at some arbitrary point in space. As such, having those hatching marks go across the width span of the ribbon structure we've created will give us clear starting and stopping points, avoiding the sloppiness that can come from having them stop suddenly and arbitrarily.

As with all of our marks that need to flow smoothly, you'll be executing these hatching marks from your shoulder. You should also be using the ghosting method (as we do for all of our freehanded marks throughout this course), although instead of applying it independently for every hatching mark, you do so for the first, and then as long as you maintain the same rhythm of executing one after the other, you can essentially rely on the previous execution as being the ghosting for the next. If however you lose your rhythm, stop and go through the planning/preparation phases once more.

While this arrow certainly does look three dimensional, it's still pretty limited to the space defined by the page. You need to let it push into perspective and explore the depth of the scene and apply foreshortening (making the farther end smaller and the closer end larger).