One Simple Line

Composing a drawing on location can be surprisingly daunting. Where do you begin? What do you include, and what do you leave out? Surrounded by visual information, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed—and even easier to get stuck worrying about perspective and proportions.

Over time, I’ve found one deceptively simple tactic that helps me see the big picture and stay grounded in the process: I start every drawing with a single, simple line.

Any drawing tool will work. I prefer to sketch with fountain pens and a sketchbook, and an India ink marker to fill large black areas. My tools of choice include:

- TWSBI "Mini" fountain pen
- Duke 551 Confucius fountain pen with a "Fude" Nib (bent nib)
- Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pen Big Brush with India ink
- Stillman & Birn sketchbook

One question I get on social media more than any other is “how’d ya do that?” To be honest, I’m never quite certain what is being asked. How’d I come up with that drawing idea? How’d I find that location or subject? How’d I draw it? I kind of assume the latter is most relevant, and the simplest answer is that I start with one simple line.

I’m right hand dominant, so I begin at the left hand margin and trace an edge that runs from one side of the page to the other. It’s almost always going to be the horizontal edge that separates the positive from the negative shapes.

A sketch will begin with the most general, moving very gradually to the specific. But I want to establish the rough silhouette first. This helps me to better understand the design. If the design sucks I may abandon the sketch very early in the drawing. It’s got to hold my interest for me to put energy into it.

Once the silhouette has been established I’ll start to block in some broad details. With architecture, that is almost always going to be the “holes” – windows, archways, etc. It’s the things that make the shape start to take on meaning. However, I’m also always keenly aware of simplicity: too much “stuff” gets distracting for me, so I look for “stuff” to leave out.

Up until this point, I’ve concentrated on the middle ground, which tends to be where the main area of interest lies. With the middle ground established, it’s important to draft a few background details. Background, for me, tends to be a tool I use to both ground the image as well as to create spatial contrast.

My illustrations rely heavily on the two-dimensionality of line and shape. I don’t mind the lines overlapping and allowing other parts of the drawing to show. To me, those overlapping lines have a dynamic quality. This is also the point in a sketch when I will add elements into the foreground to enhance the illusion of space.

This is my favorite part of the sketch, the part where I start to fill shapes. There’s magic in those solid blacks. The drawing almost immediately takes on a brand new look. I love the challenge of figuring out which areas will work best being filled, and which areas will remain white. Sometimes that decision is based on what’s there in front of me: tires, windows, silhouettes of trees – they are often (but not always!) filled with black. Sometimes (but not always!) areas of shadow, like the overhang of a roof or eaves. Sometimes, it’s more arbitrary, simply because I think it makes the sketch better or helps the story being communicated in the illustration.

A few more flourishes here and there, some more fills, and that is that.