Knightsbridge in 3D

The tangle for this week's Shading Zentangle® Facebook group is Knightsbridge, which is a very standard looking black and white checkerboard. To make things a little bit more interesting, I asked participants to try to make it in 3D, that is, how many ways can you make it dimensional? To help participants, I posted this page from my sketchbook 2 days ago (click on the button to download a printable PDF version):

Learn how to create great shading with Eni Oken's ebooks • enioken.com
Learn how to create great shading with Eni Oken's ebooks • enioken.com

 

Knightsbridge is one of those super simple but versatile patterns. The grid lines can provide a "contour" over 3D shapes, which is a very important visual depth cue, helping the picture to look even more dimensional. Even before shading, the contour lines already help to identify the geometry of shapes here:

Learn how to create great shading with Eni Oken's ebooks • enioken.com
Learn how to create great shading with Eni Oken's ebooks • enioken.com

Combined with shading, you can get VERY 3-dimensional results. Here is the final picture:

Learn how to create great shading with Eni Oken's ebooks • enioken.com
Learn how to create great shading with Eni Oken's ebooks • enioken.com

Lately I've been mentioning the importance of adding highlights, especially soft ones created with white pencil over colored pencil work.

I created this picture over a renaissance tile because the tan background really helps to see the value of using white pencil to produce soft highlights.

Here is another picture:

Learn how to create great shading with Eni Oken's ebooks • enioken.com
Learn how to create great shading with Eni Oken's ebooks • enioken.com

I combined knightsbridge with ruutz, a new tangle (find the stepout here), over renaissance tile, using sepia ink, black ink, light brown and gray markers, rust colored pencil, white colored pencil, white gel pen (for the dewdrop highlight) and a regular HB pencil to deepen the shading.

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