Color Drawing: Design Drawing Skills and Techniques for Architects, Landscape Architects, and Interior Designers

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Introduction

I - COLOR DRAWING FOR COMMUNICATION

CHAPTER 1 - INITIAL CONSIDERATIONS

BEFORE COLOR SKILLS, ACQUIRE DRAWING BASICS

PHENOMENA OF COLOR AND LIGHT

THE DIMENSIONS OF COLOR

CHAPTER 2 - MEDIA AND PAPER

MEDIA

PAPER

CHAPTER 3 - TECHNIQUE

WAYS TO APPLY AND ADJUST COLOR

IMPRESSIONS OF MATERIALS

CREATING THE EFFECTS OF LIGHT

CHAPTER 4 - ELEMENTS, MATERIALS, AND FINISHES

INTERIOR MATERIALS

Furnishings and Fixtures

Lighting

Accessories

EXTERIOR MATERIALS

Ground Plane Materials

Wall Plane Materials and Windows

The Overhead Plane: Roofs and Skies

CHAPTER 5 - SCALE ELEMENTS: FIGURES AND AUTOMOBILES

DRAWING FIGURES IN COLOR

AUTOMOBILES

II - COLOR DRAWING FOR PRESENTATION

CHAPTER 6 - COLOR AND COMPOSITION IN ILLUSTRATION

HOW COLORS RELATE TO ONE ANOTHER: THE CONTRAST OF COLORS

COLOR CONTRAST AND IMAGE COMPOSITION

CHAPTER 7 - APPROACHES TO CREATING COLOR DESIGN DRAWINGS

THE FIRST CONSIDERATION: MAKE THE LINE DRAWING

THE SECOND CONSIDERATION: CREATE A VALUE STRATEGY

THE THIRD CONSIDERATION: THE SCAN

THE FOURTH CONSIDERATION: APPROACHES TO COLOR MEDIA

ADDITIONAL LAYERS OF INFORMATION

CHAPTER 8 - DIGITAL COLOR DRAWING

APPROACH

BASIC DRAWING TYPES

USING FILTERS IN DIGITAL COLOR DRAWING

GLOSSARY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

DESIGN CREDITS

INDEX

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

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Published simultaneously in Canada

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ISBN-13: 978-0-471-74190-9 ISBN-10: 0-471-74190-6

TO WILLIAM KIRBY LOCKARD, FAIA

For your kindness, mentorship, and support.

Drawing as a Means to Architecture spoke to me as a student,

late one night years ago, and changed my life.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book would not have been accomplished without the presence of the many generous people in my life:

My wife, Ellen, for her love and wisdom.

The partners of CommArts—Janet Martin, Richard Foy, and Henry Beer—whom I thank for their continued and enthusiastic support.

The many designers and staff at CommArts, who freely gave their assistance: Melissa Britz, Taku Shimizu, Bryan Gough, Kristian Kluver, Jim Babinchak, Grady Huff, Patty Van Hook, and Gary Kushner. Keith Harley deserves special thanks for the graphic design of this book and its cover.

John Bacus, for his brilliance and wit—and for opening my eyes to the digital universe.

The Design Communication Association (DCA), for its support of both traditional and new design communication education. The DCA has given us a wonderful way to exchange ideas about how to more effectively communicate our design ideas.

James R. DeTuerk, professor emeritus, Department of Landscape Architecture, the Pennsylvania State University. I will be forever grateful for his inspiration.

Frank M. Costantino, Douglas E. Jamieson, Ronald J. Love, Thomas W. Schaller, AIA, and Curtis J. Woodhouse for their generosity in allowing me to publish their professional illustrations. Their words of encouragement were much appreciated.

Paul Stevenson Oles, FAIA, for his gentle insistence, through his work and his words, that value is the key to effective color illustration.

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this book is to provide an approach to drawing in color during the early phases of your design process. As you become familiar with this approach, you will find your ability to draw in color considerably expanded and, as a result, you will be able to create your design studies more quickly and effectively. You will also find yourself selecting—and inventing—favorite ways of drawing in color. This is as it should be, as there is no one correct approach to creating these drawings. Rather, you will find that your approach keeps changing and adjusting, depending on the design communication task before you. Use the approach—or combination of approaches—that works best for each situation. A significant amount of new material on digital techniques has been added to this new edition, and the presentation of this material presumes the reader has a working knowledge of Photoshop. You may choose to incorporate some or all of these techniques into your approach to color drawing. Or you may choose not to use any of them. The utility of Color Drawing, third edition, does not depend on your understanding or use of digital drawing techniques.

Most of the step-by-step drawings in the book are in perspective, but begin with a completed line drawing. However, be assured that no amount of skill with color can help a drawing that has a poorly drawn underlying structure or one that demonstrates a lack of understanding of light, shade, and shadow. Perspective and shade and shadow are the universal language of design picture making. They form the link between you and those to whom you wish to communicate your conceptual ideas about form, space, and, ultimately, place. In order to help you review and recall the basic elements of design drawing, summary sheets on perspective, line quality, shade and shadow, and illumination have been added to the opening chapter.

If you are new to color design drawing, start at the beginning of the book, because it is organized in a way that builds skills one step at a time, with each succeeding chapter predicated on information supplied by those previous to it. On the other hand, if you are more familiar with this kind of drawing, you may wish to use the book more like a handbook, accessing materials, methods, and techniques as needed.

Part I is an overview of the basic phenomena, media, papers, and techniques that assist you in illustrating the various elements, materials, and finishes you propose to use to bring your ideas to life. You illustrate them to communicate them both to yourself and to others. Chapter 1 is an empirical introduction to the subject, presenting the phenomena of color and light that inform the effects and techniques used throughout the book. Chapter 2 discusses the media and papers that work best for color design drawing. Line media and color media—including pastels and alcohol-based markers—are introduced, as well as recommended palettes of markers, color pencils, and pastels. Ink-jet paper has been added to a list of papers that includes Canson paper and bond paper, all of which are compatible with this book’s approach to color drawing. Chapter 3 shows a variety of techniques used to apply color media and to create impressions of materials, and now includes basic digital techniques. The sketch/photo combo—hand drawing with digital color, hybrid color drawing, and a new retrocolor technique that uses mylar are a particular focus. Chapter 4 uses these media, paper, and techniques to create an encyclopedia of step-by-step approaches to the illustration of elements, materials, and finishes that architects, landscape architects, and interior designers commonly use in practice. Chapter 5 shows how to draw scale elements in color, including unique approaches to drawing automobiles and a new way to illustrate human figures.

Part II shows how the basic skills found in Part I can be used to create a range of drawings for presentation purposes. In addition to looking into a drawing for design information, as Part I implicitly encourages, the designer is introduced to ways of looking at his drawings as a graphic composition and how to provide his drawings with visual organization and impact.

Chapter 6 shows how to consider your color design drawings as compositions in their own right. Color relationships are discussed in terms of contrasts, and unity, balance, proportion, and rhythm are introduced as compositional principles to be used as tools to evaluate your drawings as you prepare them for presentation. Chapter 7 shows step-by-step how to utilize the material covered in the first six chapters to create a variety of kinds of color design drawings—from quick sketches to finished presentation drawings. The first part of the chapter covers new ways to plan your drawings, with an emphasis on value composition as a means to creating dramatic impact. The rest of the chapter covers approaches for creating color design drawings on a variety of papers, including Bristol, bond, tracing paper, mylar, ink-jet paper, and toned papers such as Canson, using both traditional line drawings and different kinds of computer setup drawings. Additional layers of information found in design drawings are also discussed, including photographs and various ways of applying notes. The chapter closes with some recommendations for creating single-sheet and multiple-sheet presentations. Chapter 8 has been entirely redeveloped to introduce an approach to color drawing in which color is applied entirely by digital means.

A number of new tools and approaches to design communication have been developed during the last decade. Regardless of the ongoing development of hardware, software, and technique used to create illustrations, however, the knowledge and skills needed to do so effectively and efficiently remain unchanged. A designer still needs facility in the fundamentals of design drawing—perspective, light, value, color, and materials representation. Hopefully, you will find this new edition of Color Drawing helpful in developing these fundamentals.

Use what you can from this book as you create your own approach to a drawing-based design process—one that will, it is hoped, allow you access to the deepest reaches of your abilities. Like any tool, this book is a means to an end. Its ultimate purpose is to enable you, the designer, to make our built surroundings better than we could ever have dreamed possible.

I

COLOR DRAWING FOR COMMUNICATION

Marty Neumeier

Although draftsmanship is no longer the price of admission to a design career, those who master the language of drawing are likely to see, to think, and to communicate with more sophistication than those who only master the computer. Aside from this competitive advantage, however, there’s a deeper satisfaction to be derived from drafts-manship: the thrill of vanquishing a monstersized, fire-breathing design problem with nothing more than a small, sharpened stick.

CHAPTER 1

INITIAL CONSIDERATIONS

Those who design places for use by others—architects, landscape architects, and interior designers—engage in a specialized form of communication. They first create images of their ideas about the three-dimensional forms and spaces that make these places, but they create them on two-dimensional surfaces.

To do this effectively, a designer must understand not only the visual phenomena on which these kinds of images are based, but also how to work with them to communicate these images to others. No amount of technique with color media can rescue a drawing that displays a lack of understanding of the basics of perspective, line quality, and light and shadow.

BEFORE COLOR SKILLS, ACQUIRE DRAWING BASICS

An unfortunate outcome of our computer-intensive system of design education has been our students’ undereducation in design drawing fundamentals: perspective; line quality; the effective use of line weight, shade, and shadow; and illumination. While students and young professionals may know how these building blocks of drawing work, many have weak skills when it comes to actually using them easily, quickly, and confidently during the conceptual and schematic stages of the design process. They struggle to sketch an idea convincingly and are often embarrassed by the results. Consequently, many default entirely to the computer at an inappropriate point in the process—not to leverage skills, but to cover for their absence. This is a growing problem.

Professional design is a business. To be successful, designers must work smart. This means applying the appropriate skills to the appropriate tasks. The quick generation of design ideas demands the ability to explore them fluidly. Usually, designers who can employ eyeball perspective and quick shade and shadow techniques with pencil and paper are able to sketch out numerous alternatives in the time it takes to generate a single computer-based study. Although building your drawing skills in perspective, shade and shadow, and illumination will most certainly take time at first, such skills will not only save you time later on, they will make you far more competitive in the professional design market, whether you are self employed or work for others.

If you are just beginning the study of design, you may be curious about the best sources of information to help in building these skills. There are many books on these subjects; all take different approaches to roughly the same subject matter: drawing for designers. William Kirby Lockard’s books, such as Drawing as a Means to Architecture and Design Drawing Experiences, 2000 Edition have helped many students build their understanding and skills. Design Graphics by C. Leslie Martin is a classic, unparalleled even today in its explanation of shade and shadow construction. An annotated bibliography of the best of these books can be found in the back of this book.

Students of design must have more than book knowledge, however, in order to build their skills to the point of usefulness. The best teacher of perspective, shade and shadow, illumination, and color is the world around you. Begin your study by starting to see that world instead of simply looking at it. The best way to see is to draw, to attempt—over and over—to represent the three-dimensional world on a two-dimensional surface. If you persist, especially if you can refrain from judging your product too harshly, your skills will progress. Improvement may happen imperceptibly, as drawing to visualize slowly becomes second nature. Your skill with free, easy, and nonjudgmental drawing will be an important ally on your way to becoming a better designer.

The pages that follow are intended as summary sheets of basic design drawing skills. They are not meant to serve as a complete course in design drawing; hopefully, they will refresh your memory and function as references for its basic steps and techniques. The drawings (with the exception of the computer drawings inset in figure 1-2) were created quickly, the way a designer typically works, and in the order shown. Common drawing media—tracing paper, a .5 mm graphite pencil, Black Prismacolor pencil, and a couple of gray markers—were used.

Perspective

Figure 1-1 shows the basic elements used to create a typical perspective drawing. An important component in this early stage is the vision sketch shown at the upper left. It is important to draw this nascent image—no matter how rough or crude—directly from your mind onto a sheet of paper. Work quickly. Do not worry about correct perspective, scale, or proportion. The only thing to concern yourself with at this point is getting as much of your idea—your vision—out of your mind and onto the page as possible. Use notes liberally; add other sketches and diagrams as necessary. You will most likely have plan diagrams, even crude ones, to help you pick viewpoints and organize your thinking. While it may seem self-evident, it is only after you have your vision in front of you that you can proceed to the next steps, evolving a drawing in an informed way. Then you can make a picture of your idea using your vision sketch as a guide. The first steps in making this picture are shown in the larger image.

The green lines show how the lines in the drawing relate to their vanishing points, while the red arrows point out the parts of the drawing being discussed. The numbers show roughly the order in which these parts of the perspective were considered and utilized.

Fig. 1-1 These studies show how an initial vision is cleaned up so that it is in perspective and makes perceptual sense. A border is drawn to clearly define the drawing area. Note how the design evolves with each successive version of the drawing.

Line Quality

The drawing in figure 1-2 was created using a tracing paper overlay on the rough perspective view in figure 1-1. With the basics of perspective out of the way, the designer was free to focus on other issues. Generally, medium-weight lines are used for most of the drawing, with the designer exercising more control than in figure 1-1. Where lines intersect, the connection can be emphasized by slightly crossing the lines—called extension—and making the ends of the lines ever so slightly darker—called line snap. Somewhat heavier lines are used to emphasize distance between objects and the background where necessary; light lines are used to indicate materials, patterns, and distant objects.

Designers frequently draw directly on computer-generated wireframes, and there are ways to give computer line drawings a more hand-drawn character. This can reduce the distinction between the two types of lines and make the resultant hybrid drawing more coherent. In other words, if rough sketches can be used for presentation, you can avoid having to redraw the wireframe component of the drawing. The inset drawings in figure 1-2 show an easy way to roughen computer-generated lines.

Design drawings used for presentation that have a loose, hand-drawn character are more important during the conceptual and schematic phases than many designers realize. When shown to clients, their unfinished quality indicates that the ideas they represent are works in progress. Compared to a more polished illustration, they leave the impression that the design process is not yet closed, and they invite participation in that process.

An important but frequently overlooked point about freehand design drawing using tracing paper overlays is that while designer create these picture views of their ideas, their design minds are always working. Not only is the picture of the idea being refined, so are the design ideas represented in the view. For example, when you compare the drawings in figures 1-1 and 1-2, note how the furniture was refined, materials indicated, and patterns introduced in figure 1-2. As designers, our propensity to respond to three-dimensional views is why freehand perspective drawing is such a powerful design tool.

Fig. 1-2 The way lines are created in drawings not only helps communicate the drawing’s content, it also communicates the attitudes and intentions of the designer. Note how this overlay refines the design by adding information about furniture detail, materials, and patterns—all while improving the drawing itself.

Shade and Shadow

The term shade refers to those surfaces that face away from the sun. A shadow is an area without sunlight on a surface that would otherwise be illuminated by the sun. The shape of a shadow is determined by the form of the object that causes it. It is important for a designer to know how to approximate accurate shade and shadow three-dimensionally. Shade and shadow help reveal forms and spaces and make them appear real. They help convince the viewer of a drawing that these forms and spaces can indeed exist.

The rules for shade and shadow are few, and remain consistent no matter what the view. To best understand these rules, observe shade and shadow in your surroundings. Draw them when opportunities present themselves. You will be able to eyeball shade and shadow in a drawing sooner and more effectively than you may think possible.

Figure 1-3 shows a rough shade and shadow study done on a tracing paper overlay on the drawing in figure 1-2. First, analyze the view to consider where the sun is coming from, and from what angle. Your view may have a particular cardinal orientation that, in turn, tells you the sun direction. Likewise, there may be a particular time of day and season you want to illustrate. If your view is hypothetical, with no particular orientation, pick the sun direction and angle that will best reveal the forms and spaces in the drawing. This means the sun can come from either side, and the forms and spaces in your drawing will be partially sunlit and partially in shade.

Next, consider which surfaces are in shade (facing away from the sun) and which are sunlit. The edges that divide sunlit surfaces from shaded surfaces are known as the casting edges. They will determine the shape of the shadows. These edges may be visible in the drawing, or they may be partially or fully blocked by other objects. Think of your drawing as see-through in order to help you locate all the casting edges.

Pick a vertical casting edge and momentarily think of it as being a single, freestanding flagpole. Recall your decision about general sun direction that helped you locate the casting edges, and decide where you want the shadow of the flagpole to fall. Remember that all the shadows (caused by the sun) of all the verticals in the drawing will fall in the same direction. In a plan of the view, they would all be parallel on the sheet. This means, of course, that in the perspective view, the shadows of all these verticals point to the same vanishing point. Once you have determined the direction of the verticals’ shadows, decide how long you want the shadow of your first flagpole to be. By taking a line from the top of your flagpole to the end of your flagpole’s shadow, you will determine the sun angle. This angle can, of course, vary, depending on how high or low you want the sun, but it should remain consistent throughout the drawing (e.g., if the sun is coming from the left or right). If the sun is coming toward you or from behind you, its rays require a vanishing point (see Martin 1968). One final rule not illustrated in figure 1-3: The shadow of a vertical casting edge that falls on a vertical surface—such as a wall—is also vertical.

The shadows of horizontals cast shadows parallel to themselves, whether they fall on the ground or a nearby parallel vertical surface. Again, remember that all parallel lines point to a common vanishing point, whether they are an object or an object’s shadow. The exception to this rule is if the nearby vertical surface is perpendicular to the direction of the horizontal shadow. Then, the shadow resolves back to its casting edge, as you can see in figure 1-3.

If you are unfamiliar with the rules of shade and shadow, these brief explanations may seem like a lot to absorb. However, most shade and shadow situations can be drawn using these few rules. Sometimes, of course, interpolation may be required, such as when a wall is neither parallel nor perpendicular to a horizontal shadow, but at an angle somewhere between the two. Spend some time studying these examples, as well as the more detailed examples shown in the references in the bibliography. Most importantly, look at the world around you and notice that its shades and shadows behave the same way as the rules describe. Spend some time observing shadows on a sunny day; try to figure out how their particular shapes are formed. Once you become familiar with these rules, you will be more comfortable using them in your design drawings. Create simple objects and spaces in perspective, pick a sun angle, and practice creating its shades and shadows using these rules. With adequate practice, drawing convincing shade and shadow will become second nature.

Fig. 1-3 This is a quick shade and shadow study on a tracing paper overlay. The study includes illumination responses to the light source. The green lines are shade and shadow construction lines; the red arrows point to shade and shadow issues; the blue arrows point to illumination issues.

Illumination

The term illumination is borrowed from engineering terminology and is introduced here, in the context of design drawing, to describe nonsunlit lighting. There has long been a need in the field of design drawing to address the best ways to represent this kind of lighting. It is especially important for interior architects and designers, since they must work with this kind of lighting far more frequently than those who design outdoor environments and building exteriors.

The illustration of interior illumination created by multiple sources can be a complicated task for the designer. However, you need not illustrate each and every source of light in an interior space. Instead, an interior drawing can be adequately illustrated by indicating just a few general lighting directions. By following the minimal number of rules about interior lighting, a successful interior illustration is quite achievable.

There are a few things to remember as you start an interior lighting study. First, consider whether your space has (or will have) major sources of daylight or artificial lighting, and use them as a starting point. Surfaces that face away from these sources will be in shade, so they will be relatively darker than those facing them. Surfaces more distant from major light sources will be dimmer than those near them. Remember that all of the larger surfaces in an interior are gradients of value and color; rarely do you find a larger surface of even, consistent illumination or color. How you manipulate these gradations in an interior drawing will create the visual cues that provide an overall sense of illumination and indicate its sources.

Second, interior shadows should not be as dark or have as much contrast as exterior shadows. Make them visible, but keep them subtle. You can always darken them later as necessary, but it is usually much more difficult to lighten a surface in a drawing that has become too dark. The edges of interior shadows are almost always diffuse because they are usually created by soft and indistinct sources of light, such as frosted lamps, lamp shades, and indirect light. You will notice that interior shadows are also usually gradients—they are darker at their edges of origin and get lighter as they move away from that edge.

As you add these shadows, notice how they anchor the objects to the surfaces they touch. Until subtle shade and shadow is added, objects in a drawing can seem to float on the page. For example, a diffuse shadow under a chair visually anchors that chair to the floor. Since interiors usually have multiple sources of illumination, an object responds by casting multiple, though subtle, shadows. Each set of shadows simply falls away from the general direction of the light source to which it corresponds.

Figure 1-4 illustrates illumination at night, while figure 1-3 shows that even interiors with direct sunlight will still respond to the rules of illumination.

The best way to build skills at representing interior illumination is to create numerous quick studies and, as with building other design drawing skills, observe and draw from life. Start first with small vignettes, sketching parts of interiors that catch your interest. Gradually, work up to quickly drawing the major part of an entire space. When you are comfortable with representing illumination on that scale, try your drawing skills on spaces of your own design.

Dynamic Perspective: Computer Modeling

Not so long ago, typical presentation requirements for a school architectural project consisted of providing plans, elevations, sections, and a perspective view. The student usually left the perspective view for last, after the project had been designed via orthogonal, measured drawings. This view, in which isolated decisions coalesced, often sent the surprised designer scrambling in the wee morning hours to revise the orthogonal drawings and reflect new insights. Perspective has long been touted as a design tool because it gives the designer the advantage of experiencing the bounding planes of forms and spaces in a single view—something not afforded in the easily measured but two-dimensional world of plan, elevation, and section. While certainly useful, perspectives were somewhat inconvenient and slow to set up. No longer.

The ubiquity of computer modeling has revolutionized how we practice design in architecture, interior design, and landscape architecture. Nascent ideas about form and space can be visualized quickly and easily. The designer can view, rotate, and walk through an idea in three dimensions—all to exact scale—almost instantly. The amount of experiential feedback available early in the conceptual and schematic phases of a project has increased infinitely and with it, the potential for better design.

Fig. 1-4 Using a .5 mm pencil with 2H lead, this quick illumination study on tracing paper over the line drawing reveals the approximate quality of light in a room. Studies like these are a useful guide for creating a more finished illustration.

One of the best computer applications for use as a companion to design drawing is SketchUp, which quickly models three-dimensional ideas to scale (1-5). It is relatively inexpensive and available for trial and purchase online. Its tool palette is simple and its learning curve very short. While it is not the application of choice for highly complex form modeling, most typical forms and spaces can be developed quickly and easily. Its shade and shadow is dynamic: They follow the model as it is rotated, so no computer redraw or render time is necessary. Shade and shadow can be easily tuned to time of day and location. Predrawn components, such as human figures, vehicles, landscape materials, and furniture are available from drag-and-drop palettes, and these elements are automatically scaled properly; your own digital imagery can be used as well. For example, a sketched floor plan can be imported, upon which the three-dimensional model can be quickly built.

Ironically, with the availability of applications like SketchUp, it is more important than ever for the designer to have a working knowledge of the basics of design drawing. Why? Our ability to flesh out basic computer models and wireframes into sketch picture views with adequate detail and contextual elements—views that help team members and clients make decisions—still depends on taking advantage of the speed and deftness afforded by skill in design drawing (1-6). Designers who can deploy the principles of perspective, create respectably proportioned human figures, apply shade, shadow, and illumination, as well as represent basic building and plant materials, can free themselves from the time-consuming constraints of the computer during the early phases of the design process.

Fig. 1-5 The sketch in the upper left is the first hand-drawn vision sketch for an urban transit shelter, created during a design meeting. The other views are taken from subsequent SketchUp models of the idea. At the upper right is an early concept view; at the lower left, a view from the schematic design phase; and at the lower right, a schematic design study of the roof canopy.

Fig. 1-6 A SketchUp model was used to generate a series of very quick design drawings for an urban revitalization competition.The drawing at the upper right was used to show how a usable village green could be created on a sloping site. The study, left, was made on tracing paper over a printout view of the model, using a .5 mm graphite pencil with 2H lead. Color pencil was applied on the back of the tracing paper. The drawing was scanned with the printout view of the model still behind it, avoiding the necessity of redrawing the lines of the contextual buildings, since the model’s lines showed through the tracing paper. The image was imported into Photoshop. All but the area with color was selected. The gray lines were changed to the sepia color by adjusting the Hue slider (Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation > Colorize).

The study drawing at the lower right was also created on tracing paper over a model view, lower left. The scan of the drawing was colorized similarly to its counterpart, above. Notes were added to both drawings in Photoshop.

PHENOMENA OF COLOR AND LIGHT

To successfully illustrate design ideas, it is instructive—and, more to the point, necessary—to observe the color phenomena that surround you in your everyday life. Ten such basic phenomena are briefly discussed and illustrated here. You will discover more, but these 10 should help you to understand the relationship between what you see around you and the techniques shown later in the book. It is hoped that they will also inspire you to use the power of your own unique observations.

Local Tone

Every object has an intrinsic lightness or darkness, regardless of its illumination. This phenomenon is known as local tone, a term coined by artist and teacher Nathan Goldstein (1977). A typical brick, for example, has a much darker local tone than a block of white marble. When both are exposed to sunlight, each will have lighter and darker sides, but the illuminated faces of the brick will still be darker than the shaded faces of the marble (1-7).

When you create color drawings that illustrate various forms, whether buildings, landscapes, or interiors, each form will possess a local tone owing to your choice of its material. Each form will have lighter and darker surfaces, as in the preceding example, depending on the location of the light sources. The degree of lightness or darkness of these surfaces will be in