TONE AND LINE

Transparent Drawing requires that you draw lines and then put tones between the lines. At least that is what I do. We should give some of our attention to the matter of tones and lines.

Resources such as Ching and Lockard will give you ample information on the uses of lines and tones. Of course, all of their examples are representational and not transparent. Nevertheless, books such as these should be in your library, electronic or otherwise. Although I may have mentioned this before, the two mentioned books are available online for free downloads. As always, make sure that the download is legal and all of that.

Part of what you should be thinking about as you make your drawings is the priority of lines and tones. Let’s just think about lines for a moment. To make your shapes and enclosures, you could use only lines. These lines would typically outline each segment of your composition.  In computer parlance, this would be called a wire frame drawing.

It is the application and manipulation of tone that distinguishes the Transparent Drawing. In my watercolors to date, I have put a much higher priority on tones rather than lines. One of the things that I really like about watercolors is that transparent tones can be applied very quickly.

To branch out a bit, I experimented to see if suitable transparency could be communicated via only lines, using the techniques presented in the reference material. The application of regular lines to create tones goes back to the beginning of drawing. In my education, there were certainly many exercises in which we were required to complete this sort of drawing. You had to get the lines even and regular so as to work towards a representational picture. But we know how limiting and boring that is.

In these two examples, I took a Mandarin character and did a simple vertical projection. One of the drawings is something like an axonometric / perspective. The other is a perspective.

In each of the drawings, I prioritized tone rather than line. I applied the tones with my vertical lines much as I would have applied watercolor tones. I tried to pay attention to a general light direction.

While it might be my limited draftsmanship, the overlapping transparency is not communicated all that clearly. At least using the technique which Lockard calls Tone of Lines on page 173. Because Transparent Drawing is concerned about how something works, the use of lines as tones introduces unnecessary complication to the goal. Nevertheless, the drawing is transparent and begins to communicate form and space simultaneously.

Suffice to say that the media and technique of Transparent Drawing is open source. Whatever media you wish to apply to your paper in whatever means at your disposal is completely up to you. What about collage? Graphite tones? Markers? Diluted paints? Charcoal smudges? Spray paint splatter? Inks? Dyes? Colored pencil?