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Citrus limon No.2
A work in progress
Image size: 11.5 inches x 8.5 inches
(Please be patient while images load)
| Winsor and Newton 140 lb. hot press watercolor paper |
| Koh-I-Noor Rapidograph pen, stainless steel nib, sizes 6 x 0 |
| Koh-I-Noor UltraDraw Ink |
This drawing is a study of the common lemon, scientific name Citrus limon. I like lemons as subjects because they have texture. A textured surface is suited to black ink work because of the subtleties it can achieve. I may do this entire drawing with a Rapidograph 6 x 0 nib, the smallest I use. Using a very small nib can give a drawing wonderful and distinct texture.
You may notice slight variances in the yellowness or blueness of these black and white images. I am using both a camera and a scanner to record the stages.
Stage 1
The initial drawing
Below is a photo of the drawing when one layer of stippling with a 6 x 0 nib has been completed.
You will see that the whites of some highlights have been preserved at this point, and a generally even tone is in the entire drawing. As details are added, the tonal quality of the differing elements will be developed.
Above is the drawing at 10 and a half hours. I have started to develop the leaves with two more layers of stippling. The leaves, being green, will be the darkest elements in this drawing.
Above is a scan of the leaves at 12 hours into the drawing. The dark tonal values are being added to the darkest leaf at this point.
Above is a scan of the drawing at 13 and a half hours. I have continued to add the texture to the leaves, and this will be further developed as I go along.
Above is the drawing at 20 hours. I have started to darken the leaf most toward the rear (on the right) and then to bring the other horizontal leaf into balance with it. The left side of the vertical leaf is the brightest leaf area, so that will be filled in last. The leaves are starting to look very dark, and in person, might even appear overly dark. However, once the fruit of the lemon is filled in, and because it will be paler than the leaves to represent its yellow color, the drawing will come back into balance.
Above is the drawing at 23 and a half hours. At this point I am going over the leaf in the forefront, making it look more natural and blended in with the darker leaf behind it. I will do the same for the vertical leaf next. After I get them more or less on the same tonal plane, I can add even more dots to areas where there would be additional shadows or details.
At 26 hours - Instead of working on the vertical leaf, I decided to start the initial darkening of the lemon itself and the half lemon. This will help me to keep the overall drawing in balance. The detail below shows the different tonal areas of the lemon - I have done the most stippling on the lower left area, and the rest of the lemon will gradually develop in the same way. You will notice on the half lemon that I have, at this point, not added any stippling at all to the areas that will be the lightest. Those will be the lightest in the entire drawing, and I will do any tonal values in those areas last.
At 26 hours, detail
Above is the drawing at 31 hours. I left the scan large to show the detail in the lemon and half-lemon. The scan is done set on "grayscale" because that showed more detail. The contrast and the darkness of the black is actually more intense. You can see in the lemon that the texture is made up of circle-type shapes. The size of these shapes allows me to control the darkness of the area. The larger the circle, the lighter the area looks. Once the half lemon and the leaves are done, I can darken the texture of the lemon to balance the drawing. (See below)
Lemon detail at 31 hours (scanner set at grayscale). Below is the half lemon and the detail there. All the marks are done with stippling and a 6 x 0 pen, even though some lines might look drawn with constant pressure.
Below is the drawing at 33 and a half hours (scanner set at grayscale). It is almost complete, including the vertical leaf, and other than checking it over for tonal qualities I want to adjust, I only have to darken some areas of the whole lemon. The half lemon had to be different values of "yellow" in black and white, which made me choose between being able to well-define the details, or to keep it closer in tone to the already-stippled whole lemon. I chose to add details that at this point make the center and right half of the drawing look slightly too dark. If I gently darken the whole lemon, the overall drawing will be more in balance.
Below is the finished drawing at 34 hours, scanned with the scanner set at 200 dpi grayscale. The darkening of the right side of the whole lemon pulls the drawing together. There are some advantages to stippling in black and white over stippling in color. A color stippling project took 89.5 hours because the final colors are built up with many stippled layers. That drawing also had more components to it. In black and white, I have finished this drawing in 34 hour hours, about one third of the time as color. Because the layers are all the same color, the overall tone fills in more quickly. Although black and white may not be as immediately eye-catching as color, depending on the viewer's personal tastes, black and white stippling is a very nice way to capture detail in illustration. It continues to be the one medium I will always do. Whenever we here on the Cape have to prepare for any type of bad weather evacuation, the only art equipment I pack are my pens and a couple of bottles of Ultradraw ink. For me, anything can be captured accurately with black and white pen and ink, from botanical subjects such as this example, to portraits and landscapes.
While I was working on this drawing, I had the elements of it covered with a sheet of tracing paper. However, the edges of the paper were not covered. I happened to be spraying some Lysol spray near the drawing and the overspray darkened the edges of the paper. Although the drawing could be framed the way it is, the edge is dark enough to bother me, so what I may do is put a watercolor border around this drawing to hide that. If so, I will post the steps for accomplishing that in another work-in-progress page. And, as I believe it was probably the ingredients of the Lysol that darkened the paper, I will be sure to cover my drawings completely while they are in the studio.
Thank you for viewing this!.