The Importance of Value in Drawings

Tonight in my Pencil Drawing Workshop, we will explore light & shadow in our drawings.  As a person who is drawn to color, I'm always amazed at how important light and shadow is to creating the illusion of 3 dimensions on a flat piece of paper.  

You can see how powerful value is when we turn a color image to black & white. Taking away the distraction of color helps to make the light & shadows apparent.

It took me years to really see shadows, to notice how they often have lighter and darker portions, and to see how light -- in this case, sunlight shining through a window on the left -- bounces off of the white part of the bowl and reflects onto the right side of the two pears on the right.

Here's an illustration of how light falls on a ball.

Seeing shadows on the ball helps us to see light & shadow on more complex shapes.

Remember, you don't have to get all of the values exactly right.  

Try giving your drawing 4 to 5 values, from brightest highlights to darkest darks.

Remember; you're not a camera, and you don't need to be perfect!  I encourage you to play around with seeing and drawing shadows.  

Making a few drawings focusing especially on values will help you to develop the ability to create depth in your artwork.  

I find that art created simply for an "assignment" like this feels less precious so it's easier to focus on the process of drawing.  You notice more, discover more, and learn more as you draw.

Happy Creating!

Trying Tonal Drawings

Last week in my Figure Drawing class, we studied how value creates depth in a drawing.  We saw how using just 4 values in your drawing, you can create a sense of dimension. 

Start with a quick line drawing, marking in areas of shadow.  

Choose 4 values: 

darkest darks, 

lighter shadows, 

mid-tones and 

highlights.  

Lay in the tones, using a light hand on the highlights -- they're easy to overdo.  Step back often to see the larger effect of your shadows. Finish by blending the tones and adding finishing touches.

You can see the 4 tones I used in the top left corner of the drawing below.  I used vine charcoal and white NuPastel on toned paper.

As much as I love line, I love the depth that values create.  

I hope you give this process a try! 

Happy Creating! 

Pencil Drawing: A Voice from the Past

A dear friend was cleaning out his studio and gave me this book.  I've been admiring the illustrations -- all done in graphite pencil.

Sometimes, it's simply fun to "picture walk" through a book (as my eldest called it in their childhood), absorbing inspiration from the images.

As artists, we learn from copying other artists.  

These simple exercises in mark making and value studies keep our hand limber, help us expand our skills and explore new types of marks we can use in our drawings.

I hope you copy some of these pages and then add your own twist.

Wishing you sparkling inspiration and happy creating!

Painting The Space Upstairs

You may recognize this scene from my earlier post, The Value of a Value Study, about creating a monochromatic study of this photo taken in The Space Upstairs dance studio in Pittsburgh.

I used this value study to help me lay out the values of the final painting.

I began the painting with a pencil sketch.  When I had laid out all the shapes and gotten the geometry of each object correct, I began laying in washes.

I started with the lighter values, but added in some of the darker values and details to get a sense of the contrast and depth of the painting.

I slowly added more definition.

I paid attention to the values within areas of detail. 

By representing those values, I created a sense of that feature.  

For instance, the briefcase (brown towards the bottom) doesn't have any fine brush marks, 

but I did look carefully at where the shadows on the handle and the latches were, 

and tried to create those values.

The stacks of papers on the briefcase had much more detail in them than I included in my painting, 

but I decided that I wanted other parts of the painting to be the focus.

The final painting is my homage to The Space Upstairs and its magical creativity.

Many thanks to Pearlann Porter, Artistic Director of The Space Upstairs for the inspiration!

The Value of a Value Study

I am still feeling inspired by my visit to The Space Upstairs.

I decided to have a play with making a simple value study of this scene.

I used a vintage Multigraph pencil to make my value study, and a water brush pen to wet the pigment and let it flow.

A value study helps you to decide how to compose a final painting, allowing you to see where the high contrast in values will fall.  

The high contrast parts of the scene catch the viewer's eye.  

Making sure that your painting has contrasting values around the focal point creates a stronger composition, one that draws the viewer in.

And creating a value study is just another way to play with your art supplies, fill a sketch book, and get practice with no pressure.

You're just making a study. 

I hope you have a play with value studies some time soon!

Osher Figure Drawing with Model Emily

We had a wonderful Osher class today with model Emily!  We began the class with five two-minute gesture poses, and I encouraged my students to draw rapidly, capturing interior structures as well as exterior contours. Emily gave us active, elegant poses to study.

We moved on to drawing the face using shadows primarily.  David set the camera to transmit a black-and-white image, and we started the first two minutes of the fifteen-minute pose with the camera de-focused. After two minutes, we sharpened the image a little, and after two more minutes, we sharpened the image to tack-sharp.  

This approach allowed us to really see the shadow shapes without getting caught up in trying to draw features, and it forced a technique artists often use in the studio in real life, intentionally blurring their vision.  

 We finished up with an hour-long pose (with breaks for Emily!).  Some students focused just on the portrait, and others drew the entire foreshortened pose.

Many thanks to model Emily for her elegant poses and rock-solid stillness!

More Colorist's Value Studies of the Figure

In Friday's Osher class, David was our model, and it felt so good to have a model in the studio, even though I was drawing off the monitor like my students. David gave us creative gesture poses, and a lovely long pose, and he set up the lights to provide us with lots of gorgeous shadows.

We did studies of legs and feet, but with a playful twist.  I demonstrated my approach of looking for highlights, midtones, moderate shadows & deep shadows, and assigning a different color to each tone.  Instead of trying to represent familiar body parts, this approach invites you to capture shadow shapes, which I find freeing.  I had an especially good time discovering the little negative space shadows between the toes in this drawing.

During the gesture poses, I focused on capturing the masses of David's body in the first minute, then took the final 2 minutes to seek out contour lines and shadows.

The Benefit of Living with a Model Update

The end of the semester has brought a flurry of university Zoom modeling sessions.  In one of our last sessions, David modeled, and I ran the camera.  During the long pose, I grabbed a set of graytone pastels with 5 values:  white, light gray, medium gray, dark gray and black.  After a quick vine charcoal gesture, I tried to capture the areas of highlight and shadow in the bold lighting, discerning each step as best I could. 

Though I ran out of time before I completed the scene, I enjoyed getting lost in finding the shadow shapes and values.  His back was all in shadow, yet the values within the shadows on David's back changed with each rise and fall of his form. The dark valley of his spine transitioned into the higher, lighter ridges of muscle that parallel it on either side.  

I find I can achieve pleasing results when I stay true to the values I see, and feel lucky to get to practice.

The Benefit of Living with an Art Model Update

 

In a recent Zoom class, I worked the camera while David modeled. Professor Sue Powers demonstrated using different colors to represent values. Doing this keeps the brain from focusing on outer lines around the body, and builds the mass of the body from within, finishing with a few contour lines on top.  It's easier to see the real construction of the body when you focus on shadow shapes.  Here, I used hot pink as the base body tone, white for highlights, aqua for medium shadows and black for dark shadows.  

This technique helped me to construct a realistic and live-looking hand.  Sue recommended working quickly, and keeping your drawing implement in contact with the paper, even if you only make thready little lines.  Thanks, Sue!

Figure Drawing Class

Here are a few drawings from my Osher Figure Drawing class today.  I have included the homework projects I assigned the class last week. I had fun creating a value study with different media.  That practice set me up to really appreciate the various values in the vase and hand drawings.

Model David gave us some beautiful poses today as we studied hands and feet. My charcoal sketches are below.

Homework: 

Class today:

David's foot in detailed study.  I had to use the "paper stretcher" because I ran out of space on the page!