Choose a bowl of simple form showing light and dark contrasts. Place it at some distance from you, so that you can see a little way into it. Draw the bowl in charcoal mass, using the flat side of a short piece of charcoal or crayon.
A Wash-Drawing of the Bowl.
The drawing on this page, the one on the page before this, and the two on pages [48] and [49], are all pictures of the same bowl. They do not look alike, because they are done with different materials, or, as we sometimes say, with different mediums. It is well for us to know how to draw with charcoal, brush and ink, pencil, crayons, and water-color, so that we can choose the medium or material that seems best suited to the particular object which we may wish to represent. A good workman understands the use of many tools.
Drawings that are made with a brush and water mixed with ink or color are sometimes called wash-drawings. In such work, light and dark effects are shown, rather than actual color. Wash-drawings differ in character from drawings made with pencil, charcoal, or crayons. You can easily tell which sketches of the bowl were made with a wet medium and which with a dry medium.
In the sketch on this page do you see that there are two values shown on the inside of the bowl? Although the inner glaze was everywhere the same color, the deep shadows in the bowl give the effect of a darker value.
Make a wash-drawing of the bowl you studied in charcoal mass. Do not draw its outline first. Wash in the shape of the top, and then the mass for the front or outer surface. Notice the use made of the white line in suggesting the edge.
