This week, the name of the game is value studies. That is, blocking in the broad shadow and light shapes in the drawing. Shadow and light are how we understand 3D volume in a 2D image, so getting them right has major impact on a picture’s believability.
In the first set of exercises, we are doing just 2 values. What is light, what is dark?
And then go on to do 5 value studies. This adds brighter highlights, bounce light in shadow areas, and regions of ambient occlusion where no light reaches at all. My initial attempt at it was awful. I restarted 4 times because the form just kept looking wrong to me. In the end it came out somewhat all right, although I forgot to do any actual highlights.
Trying to put the 5 values to an outline sketch proved to be too much for me. I kept getting confused. Should this be value 3 or 4? I wasn’t thinking in terms of “bounce light” or “highlight” yet.
What I ended up doing for the next was starting with a 2 value study, then refining it. If there was some lightness in a shadow region, that’s bounce lighting. Even darker patch? Ambient occlusion. That helped guide my brain and made this work.
