The Elements of Drawing - Exercise 3

The Elements of Drawing - Exercise 3
Ink on Paper
10cm x 18cm (4" x 7")

Exercise 3 from John Ruskin’s The Elements of Drawing is an extension to Exercise 1.

Ruskin says:

"As soon as you find you have some command of the pen as a shading instrument, and can lay a pale or dark tint as you choose, try to produce gradated spaces like Fig. 2"

The Elements of Drawing - Exercise 3

The instructions are 

"Draw, therefore, two parallel lines for limits to your work, and try to gradate the shade evenly from white to black, passing over the greatest possible distance, yet so that every part of the band may have visible change in it."

My lines were wobbly because I drew them free hand, without flattening the page - which was a mistake. The exercise would be easier with properly straight and parallel lines. After that, the exercise went  smoothly. One skill I improved was my ability to remove ink using 

"the edge of your penknife very lightly, and for some time,"

During Exercise 1, I was scratching the paper which made adding more ink difficult. In this exercise, I managed to scrape off ink without creating any noticeable damage. It seemed like I could have carried on for a lot longer adding and removing ink. Eventually, I stopped because I couldn’t tell whether I was improving the gradations or making them worse.

Ruskin says

"The perception of gradation is very deficient in all beginners (not to say, in many artists), and you will probably, for some time, think your gradation skilful enough, when it is quite patchy and imperfect."

He emphasizes: 

"Nearly all expression of form, in drawing, depends on your power of gradating delicately"

And suggests

"look for gradated spaces in Nature. …

At last, when your eye gets keen and true, you will see gradation on everything in Nature."

Happy Christmas 2025

Elf on a Mission
Watercolour & Ink
Stillman & Birn Alpha Series Sketchbook
14.0cm x 8.9cm (5.5" x 3.5")

Wishing You a Happy Christmas and a Wonderful 2026

Drawing and Painting the Landscape - Glazing

Country Landscape
(Based on Don Rankin's Mastering Glazing Techniques in Watercolor)
Acrylic on Paper
14cm x 14cm (5.5" x 5.5")

Lesson 43 of Drawing and Painting the Landscape by Philip Tyler is about Glazing techniques. Philip defines a glaze as a thin layer of transparent paint used to modify the colour or tone of a painting. It’s a bit like adding a filter in a photo editing app. You can use glazes to warm things up, cool them down or otherwise alter the atmosphere of a picture. You can glaze the whole painting or just a part of it.

Phillip suggests glazing over some of you existing studies. I didn’t have anything suitable, so I tried a more ambitious exercise. I attempted to create a painting entirely with glazes using the techniques described for watercolour by Don Rankin in Mastering Glazing Techniques in Watercolor. 

The Lakes - Winter Morning
Acrylic on Paper
19cm x 19cm (7.5" x 7.5")

This was my first effort. It’s interesting, but far from what I intended. After that, things went downhill. As I tried to reduce the vibrancy, my attempts got uglier and uglier. The main challenges are the intensity and opaqueness of acrylics when compared to watercolour. You need to thin the acrylic to an almost homeopathic level of dilution to get anything like a watery watercolour wash and even then, it still doesn’t behave like watercolour. After 6 attempts, I accepted I needed a simpler subject, so I went back to the exercises from Don’s books (see Glazing Techniques). I enjoyed painting them and they provided an opportunity to experiment with different cocktails of water, glazing medium and flow improver.

Sea Mist
(Based on Don Rankin's Mastering Glazing Techniques in Watercolor)
Acrylic on Paper
14cm x 14cm (5.5" x 5.5")

I still prefer my original watercolour versions, but I am beginning to see how I can apply these techniques to acrylics and I’m looking forward to getting back to the picture I wanted to paint.

The Elements of Drawing - Exercise 2 (Take 2)

Mistletoe
The Elements of Drawing - Exercise 2
Ink on Paper
23cm x 16.5cm (9" x 6.5")

This is my second go at Exercise 2 from John Ruskin’s The Elements of Drawing (see The Elements of Drawing - Exercise 2). I followed the same variation of the exercise as last time:

Chose an illustration from British Phænogamous Botany; Or, Figures and Description of The Genera of British Flowering Plants. 

Viscum_Album, Mistletoe

Copied the outline as closely as I could with a soft pencil on to a piece of scrap paper.

Mistletoe
The Elements of Drawing - Exercise 2
Pencil on Paper
23cm x 16.5cm (9" x 6.5")

Used Gimp (a free image editing package) to compare my drawing (in red) with the original.

Assessing Outline 1

Corrected my outline based on the feedback from the comparison. 

Made another comparison and repeated the correct and compare steps until I reached a reasonable level of accuracy (this is my fifth and final version).

Assessing Outline 5

Transferred my drawing to a clean piece of paper (using a lightbox) and then drew over it in ink (the outline at the top of the post is the result).

The exercise provides good practice for drawing by eye. It offers an opportunity to think about and test different strategies to obtain an accurate result.

For the last step, Ruskin suggests:

rest your hand on a book about an inch and a half thick, so as to hold the pen long; and go over your pencil outline with ink, raising your pen point as seldom as possible, and never leaning more heavily on one part of the line than on another.

I can’t get on with resting my hand on a book. In my first attempt I contrived a hand position which allowed me to “hold the pen long” while lightly resting my wrist on the paper. This time I didn’t rest my hand on anything. I tried to draw from my shoulder and maintain the slow control that Ruskin demands. The crux (for me) is to hold the pen so that it barely touches the paper. This allows it to easily move in any direction without catching on the paper. I am still using a fineliner - which is cheating because it is far move forgiving than a nib and less likely to catch or cause a blot if you hesitate.

Drawing and Painting the Landscape - Scumbling and Drybrush

First Light
Acrylic on Paper
19cm x 19cm (7.5" x 7.5")

I combined lesson 41 and 42 of Drawing and Painting the Landscape by Philip Tyler.

Lesson 41 is about Scumbling - the application of paint as a broken layer. Philp suggests scrubbing the paint on to the surface. This:

"causes the paint to go on really thinly, making for an optically porous surface (the ground comes through)."

Other writers describe scumbling techniques using “a drybrush and a loose hand” or rags.

Lesson 42 is about Drybrush – carefully dragging a brush with almost dry pigment over the painting surface to create a broken layer of fine marks.

Philip differentiates drybrush as being more controlled than scumbling. Both techniques create the impression of texture and depth by building up broken layers of paint. They can be used to achieve a blurred or soft appearance. 

I’ve experimented with drybrush in watercolour to give the impression of textures such as tree bark (see Branches, Roots, Hardwood Tree Bark, Conifer Tree Bark, Wood Grain, Volcanic Rock and Silver Birch).

In watercolour you are helped if you use a rough paper because the brush catches and leaves paint on the ridges, but not in the valleys. I am finding it trickier with acrylics because I am painting on a smooth surface. I suspect the trick is either to use a rougher surface or to roughen the surface with an unevenly applied gesso or impasto layer.

In the picture at the top of this post, I started off with scumbling and progressed towards drybrush in later layers, particularly on and around the boats.

Philp suggested experimenting with a dark ground.

Dark Ground and Drawing

I like the effect of the white pencil drawing on the umber background. I nearly decided this was finished. 

The Elements of Drawing - Exercise 2

Wild Tulip
The Elements of Drawing - Exercise 2
Ink on Paper
25cm x 10cm (10" x 4")

Exercise 2 from John Ruskin’s The Elements of Drawing is about copying an outline drawing of a plant.

Ruskin recommends Baxter's British Flowering Plants.

I found on online copy of British Phænogamous Botany; Or, Figures and Description of The Genera of British Flowering Plants by William Baxter, but it’s not very inspiring. The illustrations aren’t just outlines. Most of the drawings have hatch line shading and are partially obscured with watercolour. 

The exercise has three almost distinct parts. The instructions for the first part are:

Copy any of the simplest outlines, first with a soft pencil, following it, by the eye, as nearly as you can; if it does not look right in proportions, rub out and correct it, always by the eye, till you think it is right.

I picked an image of a Tulip. 

Tulipa Sylvestris, The Wild Tulip

This is my first attempt at the outline:

Wild Tulip - Outline 1
The Elements of Drawing - Exercise 2
Pencil on Paper
25cm x 10cm (10" x 4")

The next step is 

lay tracing-paper on the book; on this paper trace the outline you have been copying, and apply it to your own; and having thus ascertained the faults, correct them all patiently, till you have got it as nearly accurate as may be. 

Instead of using tracing paper I overlayed the two drawings in Gimp (a free image editing package). This is my first outline (in red) superimposed on the original.

Assessing Outline 1

It took me 5 passes to get to this.

Assessing Outline 5

This is as accurate as I am going to achieve. Eventually, you get to a point of diminishing returns because depending on how you line up the drawings a part that looked good in the previous comparison, suddenly looks worse.

The third part is to draw the image in ink:

take a quill pen, not very fine at the point; rest your hand on a book about an inch and a half thick, so as to hold the pen long; and go over your pencil outline with ink, raising your pen point as seldom as possible, and never leaning more heavily on one part of the line than on another.

As soon as you can copy every curve slowly and accurately, you have made satisfactory progress; but you will find the difficulty is in the slowness. It is easy to draw what appears to be a good line with a sweep of the hand, or with what is called freedom; the real difficulty and masterliness is in never letting the hand be free, but keeping it under entire control at every part of the line.

The point of the exercise is:

The power to be obtained is that of drawing an even line slowly and in any direction

The pen should, as it were, walk slowly over the ground, and you should be able at any moment to stop it, or to turn it in any other direction, like a well-managed horse.

Ruskin bemoans:

 In most outline drawings of the present day, parts of the curves are thickened to give an effect of shade; all such outlines are bad,

I embraced the aim of the exercise, but I balked at the use of a quill and resting my hand on a book. I tried a variety of fountain pens and fineliners and contrived a hand position which allowed me to “hold the pen long” while lightly resting my wrist on the paper. The image at the top was drawn with a fineliner - which is probably cheating. My plan is to get the hang of using a fineliner for the exercise and then try using a dip pen.

Drawing and Painting the Landscape - Pointillism

Hurst Point Lighthouse
Acrylic on Paper
19cm x 19cm (7.5" x 7.5")

Lesson 40 of Drawing and Painting the Landscape by Philip Tyler begins with an explanation of Pointillism. It’s a technique in which you apply the paint as small dots of pure colour. The viewer's mind optically blends the colours which makes them appear more vibrant.

It’s a time-consuming technique because it requires the use of small brushes to create the tiny dots. It’s not something I have much enthusiasm to try. Fortunately, Philip suggests “By increasing the size of the brush and mixing other hues the technique of dabs and dashes can be explored.” This seemed more achievable in a reasonable amount of time and also something that might fit into the way I want to paint.

This was a great lesson. I learnt more about working with acrylics, both in the actual painting and in the whole process of getting set up and cleared away. Importantly, I also started to embrace the benefits of acrylics. One of which is you can leave them to dry and paint over things to correct mistakes and to refine the picture.

As well as painting, I am working on composition using the ideas that Ian Roberts shares on his Mastering Composition YouTube channel.

I painted a different view of the lighthouse back in 2012 (see Capturing Light and Negative Painting).