Bare Naked Canvas for Realistic Drawings

by Niranjan Garde
(Pune, Maharashtra, India)

What 100 year-old building spurred me on to realistic drawings? Historically significant the Main Tower building inspires stories and students alike at the University of Pune.

Sketching is my hobby. As an architect I require it for professional purposes, too. For this rendering, I used a charcoal pencil on leather textured paper. The texture gets highlighted depending on the density of the shading pattern.

Forms of structures have always interested me. Here I am on a campus boasting a variety of buildings from grand to very modest. And each is being used by human beings. This is most intriguing to me.

For any sketch to be successfully appreciated it should exceed in basic line work, relative proportions of objects to be illustrated, the angle of framing of objects, and overall composition of the field of view on the canvas.

Using charcoal pencil on a leather textured paper means two things. First, no rubbing of any sort once you draw the line! And two, this limitation on erasing and editing compels the artist to "know" the positions of the entire picture on the bare canvas before beginning to draw.

This reminds me of the level of accuracy the ancient artists had to imbibe for sculpturing on a bare stone. Examples come to mind such as the rock cut Kailash temple in Aurangabad, India, or Petra valley in Jordan, among others.