PAU Artistic Drawing II (Canary Islands) common mistakes
PAU Artistic Drawing II (Canary Islands) · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Spending the first 40–50 minutes on a highly finished, heavily shaded rendering of one object before establishing the overall composition, so the final drawing has a dark, overworked zone and large unresolved areas elsewhere.
Candidates transfer the habit of drawing a single object to completion from portfolio work and classroom exercises, and they confuse 'detail' with 'quality'. Under timed conditions the first object consumes the budget, and the tonal scale is already committed before the whole page is considered.
What to do instead
Impose a strict time plan: 5–8 minutes for a light structural lay-in of the entire format (all objects, the full figure, the horizon), then a mid-stage of unified light/mid/dark masses across the whole sheet, and only then local detail. Practise 3-hour simulations with a visible clock and a written checkpoint at 60 and 120 minutes; if any area is finished while another is blank, the plan has been broken.
Placing the horizon line and vanishing points arbitrarily, then drawing receding edges that converge nowhere or converge in contradictory directions, producing objects that look tilted or 'float' above the ground plane.
Candidates learn one-point perspective as a formula for boxes and apply it without deciding the observer's eye level first. They also draw the object's front face as a true rectangle even when it is rotated away from the picture plane, which forces every subsequent edge into error.
What to do instead
Before any object, draw the horizon and mark the eye level on the sheet; state in one sentence where the viewer stands and at what height. Then construct each form from its plan/ footprint on the ground plane upward, checking that all receding parallels meet at points on the same horizon. Verify with a ruler at the end: extend three or four receding edges and confirm they intersect on the horizon line.
Drawing the human figure from the outline inward, starting with a contour of the silhouette or with the head, so proportions drift and the figure ends up with a head too large, shortened legs, or arms that cannot reach mid-thigh.
The contour is the most visually salient feature, so untrained perception locks onto edges. Starting at the head also makes the head the unit of measurement by default, and errors accumulate downward because each new part is judged against the previous part rather than against the whole.
What to do instead
Begin with the gesture line and the ribcage/pelvis blocks, then place landmark points (chin, nipple line, navel, pubic symphysis, mid-thigh, knee, ankle) before any contour. Use a fixed proportional check: total height ≈ 7.5 heads, pubis at mid-height, elbow at the level of the iliac crest, wrist at trochanter, fingertips at mid-thigh. Measure on the sheet with a pencil at arm's length and compare verticals and horizontals with a plumb line.
Treating value as local colour: shading every dark-coloured object darkly and every light-coloured object lightly, so a white sphere in shadow is drawn lighter than a black object in light, and the drawing loses its light logic.
Candidates conflate the object's inherent (local) value with the illumination falling on it, and they shade by 'filling in' areas rather than by comparing tonal relationships across the whole image.
What to do instead
Squint at the subject and group everything into three or four value masses regardless of local colour; establish the lightest light and the darkest dark first, then place every other tone between them. Practise by drawing the same still life twice, once as pure value ignoring local colour, and compare. Remember that a cast shadow is generally darker than the shadow side of the object casting it, and that reflected light never exceeds the value of the light side.
Choosing a graphite pencil or smooth cartridge paper for a task that asks for broad tonal masses or a colour study, or attempting a colour exercise with a single hard pencil, so the medium cannot deliver the required range and the result looks grey and thin.
Candidates default to familiar materials rather than matching medium to intention, and they underestimate how much paper tooth, binder and tool hardness determine the achievable value range and edge quality.
What to do instead
Decide the intention first (line, mass, colour note, mixed media) and select accordingly: soft graphite or charcoal on toothed paper for broad tonal work, harder leads for linear/analytic drawing, coloured pencil or pastel over a toned ground for colour studies. Test each material on a corner of the actual support before committing, and keep a small personal swatch sheet recording which combinations give which darks, blends and erasures.
Producing a drawing that is technically competent but has no clear focal point, no dominant direction, and an object placed dead centre with equal spacing around it, so the composition reads as a passive inventory of things.
Candidates concentrate all attention on rendering accuracy and treat composition as something that happens automatically once the objects are copied. They also fear that moving or cropping elements is 'cheating' relative to the model.
What to do instead
Before drawing, make two or three thumbnail sketches (5 cm) that test a viewpoint, a crop and a light source; choose one and commit. Deliberately apply a compositional device - rule of thirds or a golden-section placement for the focal point, a dominant vertical or diagonal, overlapping shapes for depth, and unequal negative-space intervals. At the end, check the sheet from a distance: there should be one place the eye goes first.
Drawing from memory or from generic symbols (an eye as an almond with lashes, a hand as five equal sausages, a tree as a cloud on a stick) instead of from the observed subject in front of them.
Perception substitutes stored categories for incoming visual information; this is efficient in daily life and fatal in observational drawing. It intensifies under time pressure, when the candidate draws what they expect to see rather than checking the actual shape.
What to do instead
Train constant comparison: measure angles against vertical and horizontal, check negative shapes between forms, and use a plumb line for alignments. Do blind-contour and cross-contour warm-ups before each session. During the exam, ask of every shape 'is this what I see or what I assume?' and verify at least three landmark relationships with the pencil before darkening any line.
Leaving the drawing without a coherent spatial structure: no overlapping, no change of scale with distance, no atmospheric lightening or loss of edge contrast in the background, so foreground and background sit on the same plane.
Candidates render each element separately at full contrast and detail, because attention is drawn equally to everything. They do not consciously use the depth cues available to a draughtsman.
What to do instead
Plan depth explicitly: overlap shapes, vary scale, place the base of nearer objects lower on the sheet, and reserve the sharpest edges and strongest value contrast for the nearest plane, softening and lightening distant elements. Use line weight as a depth signal (heavier, more varied line in front; thinner, more uniform line behind), and reserve the whitest paper for the nearest highlights.
Ignoring the brief's stated requirements - support size or format, the specified medium, the number of studies, or the required written annotation - and submitting a single finished drawing where a process or series was asked for.
Candidates read the prompt once, fast, and then draw from habit; the pressure of the clock makes them skip the planning step and the checklist. Requirements about format and process are easy to overlook because they are not about the image itself.
What to do instead
In the first five minutes, underline every operative instruction in the prompt and rewrite it as a short numbered checklist (support, format, medium, number of pieces, time allocation, annotation). Keep it visible on the desk and tick items off before submission. Rehearse full past-paper-style prompts under timing so that reading the brief becomes part of the routine, not an afterthought.
Referring to artistic movements only through vague labels ('Picasso was cubist', 'it's expressionist') with no specific work, date, artist, or analysis of how the drawing's line, space or value actually functions.
Candidates memorise names and -isms as vocabulary without looking closely at images, and the exam's context questions ask for applied visual analysis rather than definitions. Vague answers feel safe but earn little credit.
What to do instead
Build a compact reference set of 10–15 drawings spanning Renaissance to contemporary, and for each record artist, title, approximate date, medium and support, plus two sentences on what the drawing does with line, space, proportion or value. Practise answering by naming the work first, then describing observed evidence, then linking it to the movement's aims. Use precise vocabulary (hatching, contour, foreshortening, chiaroscuro, tonal ground) rather than adjectives.