Quote:
Originally Posted by mental4astro
Here is one to get your mind, fingers & pencils, in a real knot.
I've been speaking to an illustrator with many decades of experience with the pencil, and this is his pearl of wisdom-
"If you need averted vision to see a feature, then that is how you should see it in your sketch"
Holy cow! One thing is to look directly at your work, it is another 'NOT' to look at your work whilst you do it. 
This is the ultimate test in your lightness of touch. So fine a touch that it requires averted vision to see it. Groovey I say! 
The way I see this to be achieved is not to use just a white pencil to do the shading (assuming the work is being done onto black paper). A grey colouring pencil, or a very pale blue, for the very faint details. White will have too much 'punch', building the layers gradually. |
That doesn't appeal much to me. I use averted vision to see some things because my photopic vision can't under low light - only my scotopic vision can. I'm not going to view the sketch under low light conditions. In fact, my scotopic vision won't work well under full light and I'll be using cone cells, not rods. So using averted vision I would just be using peripheral cones and I have fewer of those than rods, from memory.