Release hand
In that lesson I will teach you some exercises
that will allow you to let go of your hand.
In the ballpoint pen technique
it is very important that we have a very fluid and very loose line,
that we lose our fear
and let's be safe when making our lines.
We could divide the stroke into three parts.
The first would be a long stroke
which would be a movement from the shoulder part.
The second would be a medium stroke movement,
that it would be a movement that would go from the elbow part.
And the third would be a short movement, which would be that of the wrist,
it would have this address that the doll gives us.
So I suggest you do these exercises
I leave you in Additional Resources, which are some templates
that will allow you to start developing the types of strokes very well.
For the long stroke exercise
I highly recommend that you do not hit the elbow
do not lean your wrist.
The most important thing about that is that you feel the movement
coming off the shoulder.
For that we will divide a sheet into six squares
and in the first square
we will make straight lines from left to right,
all starting from the shoulder.
Here it does not matter that the lines are crooked,
the important thing is that you feel fluent when working with the line.
It does not matter if they stick or collide with each other,
but the important thing is that you start to feel
that you have security on the line.
Now we will make the vertical lines,
passing our lines from the bottom up.
Then we would make diagonal lines in that direction.
Since we have this frame ready, we would do the opposite diagonals.
This exercise is also very good for warming up,
since it allows our line to gain consistency.
Now we would make horizontal lines, but now from right to left.
Now we would go with the vertical lines again,
but from top to bottom.
These exercises are important because they will allow us to identify
what kind of movements are more comfortable for our body.
This would be the result we would seek to achieve.
As you can see, it is not important
that the lines are very close to each other,
what we are looking for is that we have great fluency when making the lines
and that we feel that sense of security.
Once we have the long lines ready,
we will divide the same sheet
leaving us twelve squares where we will repeat the same exercise.
The short stroke is the most important
and it is the one that will serve us the most for the ballpoint technique.
So I recommend that you practice the short stroke a lot.
When we started doing the midline exercises,
it is important that we begin to support the elbow
and let us feel that the trace is coming from there.
We will start the same,
which here would be horizontal lines from left to right.
We are cleaning the pen.
This table has a texture
that the stroke of the pen will make us uncomfortable
and it will affect us.
Then I recommend that you use another sheet below
to avoid those kinds of textures.
Now we will start to make the vertical lines.
These would be from the bottom up.
It is also important that we turn the pen a little
when we do the lines, that will allow us
that ink does not accumulate on one side only.
Now the diagonals,
and here we begin to have more fluid movements.
So this exercise is very good for us to warm up.
And we will repeat this same process in the rest of the squares.
Now we go with the horizontals, opposite, right and left,
and verticals from bottom to top.
Now we will work the short stroke, that of the wrist,
which is the one that will serve us the most and the most important for the course,
since when we work works with a pen
it is very important to have short lines
that will generate that feeling of detail.
We will start the same with short lines from left to right.
Once we have it ready,
what we are looking for is that results like this remain.
We can do this type of exercise, it will come in handy to warm up
and to begin to feel a very comfortable line.
That will help a lot to get us to let go of the hand.
Now we will see the types of strokes that we can have with the line
and how these will help us understand a little
how to generate volume and contrasts in illustrations.
There are five types of line
and how to manipulate them, which will help us a lot
to generate that type of volumes and textures that will come in handy.
The first of these is thickness.
Since the pen only has one tip,
the maximum thickness of lines that we will have is this.
In case you want a thicker line,
we will have to start reviewing and working on the same line,
but if we only want to make one line, this would be the maximum thickness.
We would have a medium thickness and a very soft thickness.
With that same tip we have to master these three types of thickness.
How do we manage to master them?
With the pressure we exert on the paper.
If we need a thick line, we will make a strong pressure.
The stronger we make it, the more solid we will have a line.
For the medium stroke we will release a little, and we will make very smooth on the paper.
And for the fine line
I recommend that you move your hand away from the tip a bit
and thus you will put less pressure on the paper.
I for example,
I have a grip on the pen a little strange,
This is how I drew my whole life, but it works very well for me.
So when we want to work things out in greater detail,
it is important that the grip is very close to the tip.
Here we would have the thick, medium and thin lines.
This will be the most important we must work on.
Another important aspect will be the size part.
The line size is essential because it will generate
that kind of visuals and contrasts and volume
we want to generate.
It is not the same, for example, this long line
than these kinds of short lines.
So if we have, for example, a circle,
there are times to generate textures, this type of dithering technique is used,
simply decreasing the size of the line.
And here it begins to give us a series of visual effects.
Another important aspect would be the spacing.
Spacing is the distance between line and line.
This distance is not the same as making thin lines
or that they separate,
or equally start with thin, separate lines
and that then they will unite.
The closer together the lines are, the more contrast we will generate.
And if we want to give a feeling of volume or luminosity,
We will start to separate those lines.
Another important aspect would be the layers.
Layers is also known as hatched,
and it is a very good technique to generate volume.
It is used a lot in the comic.
For example, this would be a layer one.
Here we would have a layer two.
Here layer one, layer two and layer three.
And this begins to give us
different tonal values in the illustration.
We can also play with those ways of layering
to generate different textures.
For example, if we make some vertical lines,
then a layer two, for example, these horizontals.
Then here some verticals.
We can play with this type of finish to generate visual effects.
And the last of these linetypes that we can generate
it would be the direction of the line.
This will be essential to generate textures and volume.
For example, here again, if we have the ball with the address
we can give you that feeling of volume.
The direction will be fundamental,
especially because it will mark us where the texture is,
and where the light is heading.
We will see that these types of techniques will come together
to generate textures, volumes and gradients.
It is important that you distinguish those types of stroke
to start manipulating them and see which one works best for you.
Let's do the following exercise, which is in Additional Resources,
that will come in handy to acquire that fluency
and that you generate control in the pen technique.
The first of them would be this series of plans.
With pressure we would do
a thick line, a medium and a thin line,
And so we would go, thick, medium, thin.
When we have it ready, we will go to make three thick lines,
three middle lines and three thin lines.
It is important that we begin to feel the pressure that we do on paper
and how this can change our stroke.
Now we would do the size one.
We start to make large lines and we decrease them in size,
This is how it generates that type of textures.
Once we reach the smallest size, we increase it again.
And we go with the opposite movement, we start with thin, small lines
and we are increasing in size.
Once we reach the maximum size, we decrease them.
Now in the spacing, we start with lines together
and we are going to push them away.
And now we go backwards, separate lines and we will join them.
For layers we would do the same, we would start with a layer one,
then we would increase layer two, layer three and layer four.
Here I propose that we alter the layers,
we would start with some diagonals as layer one,
then layer two, the interlaced diagonals.
Layer three with these verticals.
And finally, the address.
It is important that we learn to feel this line that is not straight,
but more pulling to a diagonal,
which will come in handy for the development of textures.
I highly recommend doing these exercises
that will help you let go of your hand.
In the next lesson we will look at gradients and volume.