Art Pre-exam Training -- Sketching

Author: Jiang Aimin
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-01-01
Features: Sketching is the foundation of plastic arts and has always been an indispensable examination subject in the recruitment of art colleges. Starting from high school, whether or not a student joins an art class, anyone who wants to enter an art college must undergo three years of basic training to handle sketching exams with ease. The Cihai dictionary defines "sketching" as follows: "Sketching is a type of painting that primarily uses single-colored lines and planes to shape objects. Highly skilled sketches possess independent artistic value. The tools used include pencils, charcoal, pens, and brushes, among others. Sketching is also a professional term in painting, one of the fundamental skills of plastic arts, aimed at training the observation and expression of the form, structure, dynamics, and light and shadow relationships of objects. It is typically used as a preliminary sketch or directly for creation." In practicing sketching, the first requirement is accuracy in form, meaning the outline must be correct, or, in other words, it should resemble the object. This is a requirement that should be upheld throughout the practice of sketching. One should not compromise the outline for the sake of beautiful lines, nor should one hastily apply shading or use other excuses to leave the ambiguous issues of the outline for "later correction." The outline is the skeleton of the object, and at any stage, it should be correct.