How to Draw a Clear Glass in Conte Crayon

Drawing a clear glass isn't as hard as it looks. Strong highlights and shadows are enough to describe it--as long as you get the shape three dimensional and show some of the background too, it'll come out looking very real.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Gray drawing paper
• Black and white Conte crayons
• Kneaded eraser
• Clear drinking glass

1. 
   Photo of a clear glass

   Clear off a place to put the glass you're drawing. The fewer other objects that are in the way, the easier it will be to draw the glass without reflections of other things complicating it. Ignore any scratches or dull spots on the glass, to keep it simple.
   
   A photo of a clear glass with an interesting shape is provided with this step, if you'd rather try drawing from the photo. Study the white highlights on the glass. See how they describe its shape more than anything else about it. There are also a few distinct dark areas with irregular shapes that contrast with the white highlights, but most of it just shows what's under it or behind it.
   
   For the drawing, we'll keep that simple and let the gray paper stand for what's behind the glass. Any middle value tinted art paper will do for this, tan or gray or even a color would be fine. Because the glass is clear, it has no color of its own.

2. 
   Clear Glass, first stage of drawing

   Study the shape of the glass. Looking down on it, you can see the top is a smooth oval. Specifically, the top has some highlights that define its shape. Start by sketching those highlights in white Conte crayon. Don't close the oval completely, just draw the highlights that are there.
   
   If your glass is anything like mine, there are some secondary highlights on the bead of the rim. Simplify those and sketch them in. Draw only the white highlights, paying attention to their shape and position.

3. 
   Cylinder diagram showing the way slices of a cylinder look at eye level, above and below

   If the shape of the glass is lopsided in your drawing, try again. Start with the oval at the top, and try to get the placement of the white highlights proportional to that. Maybe make a series of tick marks at the sides of the bottom. The oval at the bottom as seen through the glass is distorted, but it is a wider one than the oval at the top because you're looking down more at it.
   
   In drawing a cylinder, a cross section of it is always an oval. Only if you are exactly at eye level will that oval flatten to a line. This is a diagram of a clear cylinder showing how the cross sections look above eye level and below eye level. The ovals widen the farther up or down from eye level they get.
   
   Practice this cylinder drawing both with the ovals the same width, and with the bottom oval smaller than the topmost. Draw lines between a larger but flatter oval at the top (looking down at the truncated cone) and a narrower but deeper oval at the bottom. If your glass has smooth sides this would also describe your glass perfectly, the one I'm using for an example has fluted sides that slant but jog in right at the point the fluting starts.

4. 
   Clear Glass with both black and white marks defining its shape.

   Using the black Conte crayon, pick out some distinct shadows that you can see on the glass. If you move your head slightly from side to side, these shadows and reflections alter dramatically. So move until you see them forming good lines that show the shape of the glass and are easy to draw.
   
   Don't connect the lines of white and black. Sometimes a line will turn from white to black. While simplifying, try different ways to make it show the shape of the glass. The outline of the glass as a whole should not be continuous and hard. Do a loose line that stops short of connecting and get the angles of line sections, curved or straight, as accurate as you can by eye.
   
   My drawing was done from looking at the glass at a slightly different angle than the photo was taken, so its shadows and highlights are not in exactly the same places. If you draw from the photo, pay attention to the lights and darks in that rather than in my drawing. The darker side was to the left in looking at it on my desk, while in the photo the darker side was to the right as the light was different when I took it earlier, coming from the window directly.

5. 
   Clear Glass by Robert A. Sloan

   The drawing is nearly done and could be seen as finished, but let's sharpen some details and give a bit more contrast. Strengthen the highlights especially, and pick out highlights that are close to darks.
   
   In this last stage, strengthening shadows and highlights to make the glass look better was done without necessarily trying for perfect accuracy. It's more for making it look better by exaggerating the highlights and shadow details that make the glass make sense as a glass. Look at your drawing. Is any part of it looking too faded or clumsy? Strengthen that white highlight. Strengthen the highlights on the front more than the highlights that are seen through the glass, those are muted by another layer of glass. Put some dark shadows right next to bright highlights for added drama.
   
   It takes practice to know which highlights are important and which ones aren't. Look at what actually shows the shape of the glass and what's just confusing. I eliminated the double and triple fluting that showed within the ribs as too confusing, but kept the shape of the fluting in the front and implied that by breaking those highlights. If I were drawing it photorealistically, I would have drawn in each of those repeated curves exactly where it fell.
   
   Think of anything you draw as irregular shapes of light, medium and dark areas, rather than as what it is. The biggest problem in drawing realistically is that it's easier to draw what you think is there than what is actually there. With something like drawing clear glass, it's much more important to show it by its highlights and shadows than to try to draw outlines of every feature.
   
   If you have trouble getting the shape right, print out the photo reference provided in Step One and enlarge it on your printer. Print it in black and white. Lay tracing paper over it and with white and black Conte crayon, draw right on the tracing paper -- just scribble white on the light bits and dark on the dark bits. Then set that next to your gray paper and copy it. You'll have something a lot closer to my drawing if you do, and see what I did to show the shape by just drawing highlights and shadows.
   
   Practice drawing many glass objects just by highlights and shadows till you reach a point where you can add them to still lifes easily. Glass distorts, so the colors of anything behind or near the glass may turn up as shadows or color patches in it. Simplify those and place them accurately, and your glass will always look clear!

Tips & Warnings

• Sketch many different glass objects with Conte crayon, using the white Conte crayon first because placing highlights is the most important thing.
• Sketch as many objects from life as you can, to get a feel for defining shapes without a complete outline.
• If you mess up a sketch, just start another one. Don't go back and try to change previous drawings.
• You can get similar effects drawing on gray or tan with charcoal pencil and white charcoal pencil.
• Don't worry about the texture of your paper, it may break up the line but that just helps the line fade off and look like stippling.

Resources

• Dick Blick for information and purchase of art supplies

[robertsloan2]

on 5/28/2008 Actually, I think you just gave me another good article topic! Thanks!

[robertsloan2]

on 5/28/2008 My best advice on drawing your fish tank is to look very close at the actual object. Observe the highlights. Chances are that reflections on the chrome are distorted in shape and very stark, with strong whites and blacks and colors, while reflections on the fish tank itself are subtle and transparent, colored mostly by what's inside the fish tank. The best way to show the glass would be to very lightly sketch those reflections and render what's behind them strongly, then wherever something really dark is in the fish tank draw the reflections faded, with the lightest values only about half as bright as anything inside the tank, the darks really dark, show both images superimposed like a double exposure. I guarantee that will show any viewer that flat glass is there! Drawing yourself drawing the fish tank is an elegant variation, or you could sit at an angle and put something simple and in

[Kathyw]

on 5/28/2008 I am drawing a fish tank, I'd like to know how to draw the glass. I am having a problem with the transition from chrome to clear glass to where the water starts.
Any hints would be helpful.