u/PMWeng

Man, I'm honestly afraid to start inking this.

I intend to do contoured cross-hatching. The bottom-right half I is to be predominantly dark with deep shadow, and the top-left predominantly light, as if it were a volume of mist illuminated by the setting sun in the valley to the right.

I'm doing test drawings. The second image is pretty close to how I think I'll do the inversion clouds below the cliff edge.

What do you recommend for the first marks? Should I:

A. Start with contour shading?

B. Start with general directional mid-tone hatching?

C. Start with the darkest darks?

D. Outlining?

E. Something else?

I'd like to ensure I create tonal edges, so I'm hesitant to start with outlines, even though that's the most comfortable. What would you do?

How do you like to start inking a drawing?

I couldn't figure out how to add images to a comment, so I've made a new post. with my original comment repeated (with corrections). 

These are slides from a lecture I recently gave on figure / ground relationships and other concepts. 

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I recently deconstructed this painting in order to teach kids about figure/ground relationships and the composition of significance through hierarchy and alignment.

In all honesty, I had not thought much of the piece in the past. I saw it once as a kid, but it was just one of those "important" works you know about when you study art. It held no special feeling for me. I chose it for this lesson because it was so clear. But I had no idea how clear it was!

As I broke it down, I was amazed at how rigorously structured it is. The proportions and alignments are so intentional, so precise. The location of the horizon is so full of meaning. Even the mown grass functions proportionally to communicate significance in the relation between the girl and the house. It not only communicates depth (and therefore distance) in an otherwise uniform field, but also heightens the sense of alienation by putting the girl and the viewer outside of the fully domesticated domain. Her gaze, likewise, is created by pure geometry. Every part of her body communicates with the buildings. Just look at how her right arm anchors the shed above. And the shed in return pulls her upward.

It is a truly masterful and subtle work of art that I did not understand until I started tracing lines over it.

1. I collected this little tree last season. It was a neglected unlabeled back rack ugly duckling at a nursery and nobody knew quite what it was. Do you?

2. I've noticed that my moss dries out really quickly. So I've come up with this ground-cover shade concept using vinyl window screen. This layer of moss is freshly transplanted and my thought is to let it hang out under this mesh at least until it knits together into a single pad. Am I asking for trouble, or is this a good idea?

WIP

I'm learning so much technique through this elaborate drawing (which is taking forever) that the style and penwork is just all over the place. I'm not happy with my values and some of the heavy linework is overly graphical. The result of impatience, of course.

What do you think, should I just ride it out, or start fresh with what I've learned? I'm not afraid of redrawing the same subject. That part is relatively easy and I'm sure that I'd only improve the anatomy, for example...

WDYT?