1. LINE, SHAPE, and FORM

The cube, ball, cone, and cylinder are drawn here in outline: they have line and shape but little form. The ball is not a sphere yet, merely a circular, two-dimensional shape, lacking indication of thickness or form. The cube, cone, and cylinder have some appearance of thickness because of perspective, drawn to represent their top and bottom surfaces.

Tone is the overall color on the surface of an object. It is generally classed as light, medium or dark tone. Applied to the cube, ball, cone, and cylinder, the objects begin to have more substance and solidity. Having decided that in this case light shall come from the upper right, a highlight has been left on the top and right edge of each.

Shading is drawn where no light falls. Here the light comes from the upper right, so the shading occurs on the opposite side of each object. Now the drawings have form because the objects look thick. On the cube, the shading is kept sharp and definite at the edge where two planes meet, but on the ball, cone, and cylinder the shading is blended to indicate roundness.

Light on one side of an object casts a shadow of the form falling on another surface. The cast shadow is shaped like the object itself, but is narrowed because it is lying down flat and is seen in perspective (see Lesson Two). Make the cast shadow lighter or darker in tone than the shading on the object, to distinguish the object from the shadow it casts.

Texture Use pencil, chalk, a paper stomp, or your finger to show the roughness or smoothness or variety of tone which characterizes familiar objects. The grain of wood, weave of fabric, gloss of fruit, or the ridges on a stack of books are all textures that can be reproduced by lines, dots, smudges, etc. To get that final satisfying touch of realism in your pictures, study and draw all kinds of materials and their surface textures.

When you draw familiar objects from nature, look for variations and combinations of basic forms. For example: a house is made up of cubes and half cubes. A pumpkin is a ball with curved cylinder sections around it, and the stem is another cylinder. The corn shock is a rough cone with a tousled top. The log is a cylinder, foreshortened and in perspective.

2. TONE

3. SHADING

4. CAST SHADOW

5. TEXTURE

6. VARIATIONS