Final Project: Ribbon Drawing

This is our final project of the May semester. We're going to revisit the subject matter of drawing ribbon, as it's a great way to learn how to use pastels effectively. This tutorial will also be accompanied by a video tutorial at our YouTube site.

The main objective of this project is to accurately render the ribbon using color to create a sense of reflected light and volume, accurate texture, as well as the illusion of three dimensional form on a flat picture plane. So, once again, what we're going for is a good deal of realism and accuracy!

I'm also going to go over some basic color theory terminology and color mixing which will help in our drawing practice. Let's go over some of those basics first.

Primary Colors:

 Primary colors are Red, Yellow, and Blue. You can think of these as the most basic "building blocks" of all other colors. From red, yellow, blue (plus adding in some black/white at times), we can mix pretty much everything else. If we mix together our primaries, we get what is called Secondary Colors -- purple, green, and orange.

Mix together Blue and Yellow: Green
Mix together Blue and Red: Purple
Mix together Yellow and Red: Orange

Tertiary colors is what we get when we mix intermediaries between each: so, yellowish orange, reddish orange, blue-green, etc.

 Some other useful color terms:
Monochromatic: All different shades/values of the same color (hence the "mono" meaning one)

Achromatic: "a" meaning "lacking" so, all grayscale:

And finally, one of the most important color terms, Complementary Colors:
Complementary colors are colors that are across the color wheel:

So, complements are: Red and Green, Blue and Orange, and Yellow and Purple. If you mix these together in equal amounts, you get a muddy brownish gray color. But, they are great for toning down a color (so, if your yellow is too bright, you can tone it down with a little purple). Complements are also important because they make each color brighter and more striking, so for example, if you put red next to green, it make the red stand out more.

Here the red shirt in David Hockney's painting is more noticeable and stronger set against the dark green of the mountains. It wouldn't stand out as much if he was standing in front of an orange background or a white background.

My favorite person to look at for a great use of complementary colors is the artist Wayne Thiebaud, who painted many diner scenes, cakes, confections, etc.

Notice the yellow/purple and orange/blue in these and the dramatic colors he achieves in the shadows.

And last but not least...Analagous colors. These are colors that are next to each other on the color wheel. When together, they visually blend together and are pleasing to the eye because they make a gradient. So in the diagram below, red, red-violet, and red-orange are analagous colors.

You can also see this in a lot of paintings and drawings, here for example in Van Gogh's sunflower painting.

Ok! So now you've got some color basics. Now let's go over what you'll be doing in this assignment.

You'll need one sheet of 18"x24" Canson Mi-Tientes in a medium gray. You can get this at the on-campus bookstore or Forstalls. You'll also need your set of Rembrandt pastels, your pencils, white charcoal pencil, kneaded eraser, blending tools, and a space to set up your ribbons (plus thumbtacks).

Start off by arranging your ribbon in an interesting way. Go for lots of folds and twists so that the ribbon catches the light and creates a lot of shadows and highlights. Tack it to the wall securely. Here are some examples:

Notice there are lots of folds..the thing you don't want is the ribbon laying flat against the wall..you won't have shadows and highlights if the ribbon is laying flat. Feel free to email me pictures of your set up before you start drawing.

The next step is to draw the contour. Use either graphite (2B or 4B would be good), or your charcoal pencil. Either way, keep your contour light..no need to press down here. Your goal is to get a good composition (again, that the space of the sheet of paper is well utilized and that your eye moves around the page easily, the composition is dynamic, etc), so in the first 20 minutes of the drawing, look at where the ribbon will be in relation to the edges of the page...you don't want a tiny drawing centered in the middle of the page. The drawing should have lots of interesting negative space areas and interact (or go off of..) the edge of the paper. Sometimes students will notice the drawing is too small on the page and either redraw it, or add more ribbon in another area on the wall.

Contour is done..she has started rendering the ribbon. For drawing the ribbon, the best thing to do is to put the dark values where they should be, the light values for the highlights, and start blending them together. I recommend NOT filling in the entire ribbon with one color. Look at the color to see where the darks are (and look at your pastels for the best match in color..might take couple tries to find the right pastel or combination of pastels). Add lots of white in the highlights. It will look like ribbon is there is really strong highlights, lots of contrast, and clear edges.

A note on using black: Sometimes depending on the ribbon, it's unavoidable to use black. There is sometimes simply no way to get the dark shadows without it for some colors (blue and purple ribbons come to mind). The tricky thing about black is that in addition to darkening your color, it also dulls your color. So, use it sparingly and only when you have to. If you have a pink or orange ribbon, there is probably no reason to use black. Again, it will just dull down your colors, you want the colors to stay luminous.

The other important thing is blending. This should be highly blended but you still want to maintain your shadows and highlights. It takes a little of finessing to figure out the balance between blending and over-blending. Overblending is when you blend so much that it all becomes the same value. Remember, you need lots of contrast, so blend but make sure you keep the contrast.

Be sure to add the shadows that are against the wall and the white of the wall. They will be gray but tinged with color casts from the ribbon. Look for subtle hints of the colored ribbon in your shadows.

When I blend, I find it can be useful to use your finger to smudge. Wash your hands frequently though because you don't want to blend a white highlight if you have a dark color on your hands...The blending tools work too.

Here are some more examples: Notice on this first one how she never uses black and it really works! She is just finding darker valued colors for each ribbon.

In this last one notice how great the composition is! All those nice areas of negative space (the space in between the ribbon), and how the set up goes off the page. It really interacts with the entire space. Also notice the subtle changes in the shadows depending on which ribbon it is.

Ok..so this was a long post. The first place to start is to gather your ribbon, set it up, and send a picture to me of it. Then, do the contour, and we'll go from there!