In Pursuit of a Painting.

Build DRAWING BOARD PRELIMINARY STUDIES Whether you're an abstract expressionist trying to place your brush precisely to create a particular shape or a figurative artist striving for accurate proportions and delicate details, drawing is an integral part of the painting process. These drawings were pivotal in helping Rubens determine color, value, details, form and placement for his large-scale multifigure paintings. There are few defining shadows in Study for the Figure of Christ (page 25), but notice how Rubens signifies plane breaks of the torso with chalk highlights or the way he uses rolling, overlapping lines to indicate where one form detail crosses in front of another. [Extracted from the article]