I had been meaning to draw for, well, years. Today I finally broke out the drawing supplies and paper that I bought sometime in 2014, I think. When I set out to draw, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to draw, but I knew it had to be something more than a simple exercise. (A boring drawing of a shaded sphere comes to mind.) I decided that I didn’t want to do anything that had an analog in the real world; thus I chose to draw something abstract.

It seems only natural now that I would choose lines since my photography seems to form from the lines and angles I see in scenes I want to capture. Since I wanted to learn how to shade and blend tones in my future drawings, I chose to draw shaded lines. I started the lines by drawing out faint guide lines using a rule, which I then shaded over. The darkest tones began with a 6B pencil and ended with the lightest tones in 4H pencil. I also chose to improve on the blending by overlapping different shades I made with each hardness of the pencils. Finally, I chose to smudge the shaded lines and blend in the tones by using my finger. I did this because I wanted a smooth texture to my shaded lines rather than the more dramatic texture that the paper would have given my drawing. Finally, I removed smudges along the sides and edges of my drawing with kneaded eraser.

Additionally in making the photograph for this drawing, I had the opportunity to experiment with my new lighting equipment. For this picture I was using an umbrella with an off-camera flash. Although in my next quarter in college we will begin our adventure in studio photography and lighting, I still want to experiment with what I can before then—especially since custom lighting is a skill I desire to master.

Nonetheless, this was a modest start to what will hopefully be more drawings in the future. Amusingly, my drawing was interrupted by a fire alarm that had been set off at my residence. Thankfully, it was just an accidental tripping of the fire alarm system, but I did get the opportunity to stand out in the cold and meet some of the neighbors. Haha.