Exercise: Line Drawing Detail

Here, I've created two drawings, both with continuous, flowing lines, but the tomato being my first and more detailed attempt with a fine-tip pen, and the sprout with a looser drawing style using a thicker brush pen. 

Detailed tomato drawing

It was quite hard to make a neat circle with the pen when trying to make the line continuous! This may be because I'm so used to using a faint pencil line to start a drawing, so I need to be more confident with a pen. The tomato had a consistent thickness of line, which could have made the drawing look really flat, but the big empty areas of space against cluttered detailed lines worked quite well in creating its form. 

Without being able to use shading, tone, or colour, I had to make up for this in other ways. I found repetition of pattern was a good tool for keeping things recognisable, helping to group certain sections of the tomato, i.e. the seeds or flowing lines for the liquid. The space also suggested smoothness and a shiny surface on the exterior of the tomato. So then the smaller wavy lines inside the tomato suggested liquid flowing rather than something rough (if the lines were straighter).

I tried to make a good composition by angling the tomatoes so that they draw you in to all the detail inside, which is the focal point of the tomato. This angle also helped to show the form of the tomato by using perspective, especially on the right slice of tomato. The composition isn't symmetrical either so that helped in making it more interesting. The white empty space can look quite flat, but because of its shape and the detail it encloses with the perspective lines, the form is then apparent. The detail creates depth in the tomato, too. 

By doing this exercise I found that flowing lines helps to guide the eye around the drawing. I also enjoyed it, to my surprise! It's a good, quick way of sketching something. 

Detailed drawing of a tomato

Loose sprout drawing
I then decided to create a looser drawing with a more textured exterior for a challenge. This was quite hard with the thicker pen, as detail wasn't as achievable, but using a brush pen I found I could vary the thickness. This drawing only took around five minutes, as I wanted to go for simplicity rather than detail. 

Again, the white space created the round form (on the right, the sprout exterior), with more detail towards the bottom as it curves round. 

The inside of the sprout (on the left) was meant to be flat, so I tried repeating the same messy, curvy lined pattern to create flatness rather than depth, which worked quite well. The white spaces are not enclosed in shadow or darker lines, which also helped to make it look flat. 

Loose drawing of a sprout

Overall, I prefer the tomato drawing as it looks more recognisable and sophisticated than the sprout drawing. Though the sprout was probably more fun to do!