Fudging and Squirling- Part 1

In any highly detailed representational freehand drawing project there are quite a number of stages to pass through in order to achieve the best results. These next four articles will review all the stages you need to go through to have what you need down on the paper to be able to successfully utilise the techniques used in the final stages of any highly detailed, realistic work in graphite. I call these advanced “finishing off” techniques fudging and squirling. We will be using the progress of the drawing of a glass vase as a visual aid in all four articles to demonstrate the entire process from start to finish, to explain each stage with both words and illustrations (fig. 1). Away we go…

Moving Back and Forth to Move Forward

Both fudging and squirling are terms I seem to have made up myself (it just happened, I don’t remember when or why I first started calling them that) to describe the techniques I use in the finishing stages of a hyper-realistic