I really like to draw metals. It has everything that makes it exciting: contrast and texture. In the case of aluminium, you might think that it is simply grey. This is a good example, how rich can be the colour, that always referred as a synonym of boredom. As a reference, I chose the work of metal artist János Barta, who makes sculptures similar to this one. It is worth looking for his works, he has wonderful sculptures.
This picture is extremely complex, the richness of the colours is one thing, but the real challenge is in the details. About the details in one sentence: you have to draw everything that is in the picture. This is the secret of the detailed drawing, which I wrote about earlier. In truth, this is the secret of it. It only will be detailed if the details are included. You can only learn this with practice, here I would rather write about colours.
This drawing means a lot to me. The many screws, tools and all kinds of small objects give out a whole. It reminds me of how many times in life it seems that things don’t make sense, the details don’t fit, we don’t understand “how comes that?”, then looking at it from a distance, it gives out a whole picture, comes together into something, has an arc. I like to draw crystals for the same reason, but I will write about that in the next post.
I have to mention the Carandache Pablo pencils, which I think are the best grey pencils in the world. These pencils have very rich shades. This gave the main work of the drawing, a lot of blue-shaded grey. Without it, I should add more blue to the greys.
The main colour of the drawing is gray, I used cold tones. To complement these, I used pink, purple and blue. These are especially important for the light parts, they give an extra, these thin shades are needed to make it lifelike. I always use dark purple and dark blue for the dark parts. These little things are like seasoning the food and should be treated as such. The main colours, in this case grey, are the food itself, the pasta and the tomato sauce. These are the nuances that I put in, which at first you wouldn’t say fit in, these are like the spices in the food. Salt, basil, pepper and a teaspoon of sugar. Because everything salty needs a little sweet, and everything sweet needs a little salt, that’s what my grandmother said. You could eat it without it, but it would not be a shame. This is how these complementary colours should be imagined in terms of their proportions. Spice in food.
And as for shapes, it is recommended to get a compass and a round-ruler (this word is a paradox, but I can’t name it anything else). This is a rectangle with circles in it, which helps a lot, because drawing a regular circle is quite a challenge. Also, I used my electric eraser for the highlights. It was especially useful where the springs are. In such cases, I blend the whole part and erase stripes, then colour it with a lighter shade. But it is also essential for edges.
Overall, the most complicated drawing I’ve ever done, and I love it for that. I’ve noticed that I’m more and more fond of detailed drawings, which are the challenge nowadays. In this case, the million tiny elements that make it up. It’s definitely not my last metal drawing.
