And then, there was light.
Of course, there's still darkness, and in this case, darkness is equivalent to shadows. There are so many different strengths of darkness, creating the shadows that we see today. That, folks, is what we are going to focus on today: Value shading.
According to the book, "Value deals with lightness or darkness of a color, depending on the pencil choice and the amount of pressure applied" (3dtotal Publishing 49). The book tells you to get four different kinds of pencils of varying kinds of graphite, but I find it very unnecessary to use the different pencils. One regular #2 pencil is perfectly fine, and this way you can develop your technique of using varying pressures to create different shades (however, I only had my red lead mechanical pencil with me at the time, but it's the same thing).
The next point the book says is to create a value scale. "Using a value scale before drawing helps you identify specific values and add them in at appropriate spots" (3dtotal Publishing 49). A value scale is, essentially, shadings with varying degrees of darkness to each individual shade and gets darker for each shade. This is very much important, and doing that really helped me create a deeper depth in my drawings. It made them feel much more... whole rather than flat and still. Alive, if I had to choose a word for it.
During this session, I practiced drawing arm anatomy. I focused more on the muscles than freehanding, this time.
I don't think the photo quality does this drawing justice (I'M SO PROUD OF THIS ONE FOR SOME REASON DON'T JUDGE ME) but you can still see that I shaded a bit more on certain areas to create dimension.
After a few more drawings, I could already tell that my values have improved greatly. Hopefully, I will be able to include more value in my future drawings than to leave them flat.
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Session 4 will feature Silhouettes! I hope I'll do the practice justice.
Now, my question is: Do you think it's necessary to create a value scale of 1-10? Because really, values 6-10 are the same as 1-5, just in opposite order.
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3DTotal Publishing. Beginner's Guide to Sketching: Characters, Creatures & Concepts. Worcestershire: 3DTotal, 2015. Print.
This is excellently written! I love how you describe in detail what value is and how to incorporate it in to your work. Art is one of my favorite pastimes and I utilize value in almost all of my art pieces. In my opinion, I think it's necessary to create a value of scale from 1-10 as it gives a greater effect to the intensity, drama, and depth. When did you start using value in your work?
ReplyDeleteThanks, Breanna! Technically, I have been using value in my work since the beginning, but I never really tried to expand from using one or three different values. I've started really getting into more values since around... last month?
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