The Open Sketchbook

When artists talk about "tone," they usually mean one of two things- and most drawing problems come from treating them as separate concerns.

There's the tone of a work: its mood, its weight, its atmosphere. The feeling a piece carries before you can explain why. And there's tonality: the actual spectrum of light and dark, the distribution of values across a surface, the thing you're managing every time you pick up a pencil. These two aren't just related- one is the instrument, and the other is what it plays.

This workshop is about learning to use them together. We'll go deep on value structure: how to see it, how to build it deliberately with graphite, and how the decisions you make about light and dark are also decisions about what a drawing feels like. I'll be demonstrating throughout, pulling in examples from artists who understood this at a high level, and giving direct feedback on work submitted by participants.

Layering, working with additive and subtractive approaches, how different pencils behave- the mechanics are there, but the real work is learning to see and decide. Both sessions are recorded with no expiration, so you can feel confident in reserving your spot, even if you're unable to join us for the whole workshop.

Graphite Sketchbook Studies