Vol.
2, Issue 4
December 2, 1999
Painting
on Polygons:
Conceptual Art
Part 2
by
Rick "Flatness"
Grossenbacher
irst
off, Id like to thank those of you who sent in artwork and
questions for the new Critique and Q&A section that Im
going to be starting in Painting On Polygons. And to everyone
else, keep sending in those questions!
In part
1 of this article I showed a few examples of conceptual art and
explained the major uses of concept art in the design of a video
game. In this part of the article Id like to just into some
good basic rules and techniques to follow for drawing your pictures.
You may prefer a different style in your drawing, but the things
Im going to be explaining are useful to just about anyone
because they train your eye. I really wanted to show a concept
drawing from the absolute start to finish but because of time
restraints this time around, Im going to have to save that
for a future article.
Using
Line Quality
For starters,
lets take a look at the dragon again that we saw in the
previous article.

(Click
to enlarge)
Notice
the lines in the dragon that make up his basic shape. Art instructors
will often refer to this a line quality. It is basically
the variances in pressure that you put on the pencil as you draw
to make a line lighter or darker at appropriate parts of the drawing.
In the next picture Ive labeled some sections of the drawing
in red for you to take a look at to exemplify this further.

(Click
to enlarge)
Looking
clockwise around the picture, follow the numbers:
1. Notice
how much the darkness/thickness of the line changes from one area
to the next.
2. Again,
see how the line is lighter at the beak and then darkens around
toward the top of the snout.
3. In
this area, the same type of rule applies but not just to the outside
line. Look at the scaly area on the surface of the dragons
neck. The little specks inside are also lightened and darkened
to give a better sense of texture.
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