Detlef Jumpertz

Last episode we had virtually completed the left hand side of the drawing - hip hip hooray. In this jam-packed episode, we'll cover the snake charmer's basket, the rope, and the stage curtain (not again, yes this time to demonstrate rubbing techniques), and floorboards. So let's get the ball rolling (or the should that be the rope climbing?).

Snake Charmer's Basket

I had toyed with the notion of drawing a clay or earthen vessel to house the rope, this would've made my life easier and the drawing completed quicker. I threw that idea out as I didn't think it added realism, the usual association is with a wicker basket so I went with that. Likewise, the wicker basket is also representative of another magic trick "emanating" from India and often used by western magicians - the Indian basket trick. I use the term emanating loosely as it is claimed that the Indian rope trick, is a complete fabrication (why do thoughts of WMDs spring to mind?), an urban myth, created by a US newspaper in the 1890s.

Enough of the history lesson and political commentary back to technique. Although, this basket isn't an authentic snake charmer's basket, it serves the purpose much better. It is largish to provide some context of scale, and is more interesting given its shape: round opening and square base. The round opening is metallic, and the balance is wicker.

Drawing metal is not dissimilar to drawing the drapes of the clothing with respect to technique (see Upadte #2 for more detail). Naturally, the shapes of the lines are different, but to get that burnished sheen look, it's just a case of bringing more intensity to the shading. The darks become darker and lighter areas lighter.

The wicker part of the basket, was bloody time consuming. Firstly, I rubbed the area with a soiled rag, then went over that with a 2B pencil, worked that in with the torchon, and the rubbed it in with the rag. That gives us the base shading, to which we can now either add highlights with darker pencils, or use the kneadable eraser to provide lighter highlights. The key task with the highlights was getting the interwined strands of wicker to look realistic and provide texture. This was somewhat harder than I had anticipated. Truthfully, it drove me around the twist getting all that "over/under" pattern accurate. It posed a tricky little technical challenge and a tad tedious as well! In the end, I'd call it an honourable draw between myself and the basket. I've done a passable job on it, there are some mistakes in the weave pattern (a pedant like me notices these things) where the tedium set-in, but it looks OK (I really should've paid more attention during basket weaving classes when in therapy [joke]). Whilst I was going cross-eyed trying to get the pattern right I didn't notice that I finished the task in about 3.5 hours - I really thought it'd be closer to 6 hours when I started as I found the weave pattern daunting and difficult early on.

The rope

This is fairly easy, but again tedious (I keep telling myself that the tedium is worth it in the long run, when it all comes together). Just apportion and mark-up the twirling rope fibres, and then shade accordingly (using a 2B pencil), and blend with a torchon as required. Go over the some of the lines with sharp 2B to add some crispness to the lines and voila we have a completed rope. A rope is not dissimilar to the spirally poles on merry-go-rounds, which I'd promised myself I would never draw again, looks like that's another promise broken. An hour's work to finish off the rope.



Stage curtain

The technique involves getting a 3B piece of charcoal, and placing the charcoal fairly thickly on the paper. As we can see, once applied we have quite a dark area. I leave myself about 2.5 cm of margin around where the outine of the magician is, this means I can rub to the outline of the magician, leaving a lighter area which can be back-filled once I start on the magician. We then lighten all of the charcoal by vigourously rubbing the charcoal into the paper with a rag. I use vertical rubbing strokes to simulate the direction of the folds of the curtain. The somewhat uneven action of rubbing provides "natural" drape fold lines to then highlight. Drape highlights are added using 3B, 6B and 8B pencils where appropriate, and a kneadable eraser (an absolutely indispensable piece of equipment) to lift off and further lighten areas. This series of photos demonstrates the process of what a good 2 hours work will get you.



Floorboards

The floorboards here have been the easiest thing to draw. Getting the perspective right with regard to the receding angle from the front of the stage to the rear was also simple. In this case I made each floorboard 40mm wide at the front, and 30mm at the rear, and then just join the dots to make the lines of the floorboard joins. The floorboards are rendered by lightly shading with a B pencil, then going over them with a torchon. Shade and apply greater pressure with the torchon where the join lines are, and hey Bob's your uncle, because he sure as hell ain't mine. Use a kneadable eraser to lighten just one side of the join, and you'll create more depth to the floorboards. One hour's worth of work later we end up with this.



Shadow for basket and snake charmer

Layout and composition wise I think it's all starting to come together. I do notice however that it looks slightly amiss, because I haven't as yet added any shadows to the basket or the snake charmer. Shadows are extremely important in providing added depth and perspective. Without them, we get no sense of solidity to either the basket, snake charmer, and/or the floorboards. In this case, I only decided to provide small shadows as opposed to a large shadow. I did this after some trial and (mainly) error. My initial attempt was too much shadow area, so I scaled it back and fixed the mistake with an kneadable eraser. The shadows were rendered with a B and 2B pencil and torchon, about 30 minutes work - less if I didn't make that original boo boo.



The challenge ahead

I am grappling with the final element of this drawing - the magician. How I handle this will be the make or break of this drawing! I always dread this part, 75% of the drawing complete (and I'm reasonably happy with it) and poor execution of the remainder could ruin everything. I've taken out some insurance though, if things don't go according to plan I can always cut the drawing and excise the magician altogether. This would leave a vertical panorama-like drawing of the boy, rope and snake charmer (yes, what a wimpy thing to say... yes, panic is setting in...come on man have some confidence in yourself!).

Major issue: The magician's face, what expression to use? Pensive, sombre, a twinkle in his eye, a bit of menace and mystery? Moustache or no moustache? If a moustache, is it a "ringmaster's", "hairline", part of a "goatee" or a "brush"? I'll sleep on it, and take some soundings from my wife, whose graphic design/photography experience will hopefully assist me.

Stay tuned as the drama unfolds next episode.

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