In the first exercise the primary light source was a lamp on the right hand side.
As much as I squinted my eyes to blank out unnecessary detail I was a little confused about the light source in some areas.
As far as I could make out there was a lighter area on the top left of both objects but I wasn’t sure whether it came from the primary source or from another lamp which was illuminating my drawing surface.
I couldn’t distinguish much reflected light bouncing up from the surface even though it was almost white, apart from the lower right hand side – the opposite side to the shadows.
The cast shadow on the left of the objects appeared (confusingly) to be lighter quite close to the objects and darker further away. I was guessing this may have been due some light from the second lamp. I’m not sure also if the transition ought to have been more gradual between the lightest and adjacent areas.
For the second exercise I found things a little easier, I think partly because there was only one object for each study, so the light and shadow wasn’t as interrupted as in the first exercise, also I was generally more aware of what to look out for. It was trickier to separate the tonal ranges in objects without a uniform colour range, such as the plain plastic cube I used for the tonal drawing with a dip pen. I guess I could have said the same about the natural objects in the previous exercise.
These exercises have forced me to re-evaluate my approach to value/tonal drawing – whereas previously it was more simplified i.e. I looked at only light/middle and dark tones, with maybe a couple of tones in between. The difference now is that I'm more sensitive to subtle nuances in light and shade and where they should usually be placed on and around the object/s such as: cast shadow and their make up and reflected light from other surfaces and how much more three dimensional they become once tone is added. Hopefully my future work will begin bear out this assertion.
 |
| Final drawing |
