Academic Cast Drawing

1. Intro: Here, everyone. So in this class, we're going to be focusing on a traditional approach to cast drawing. Now, if this is something you were to do in a traditional art school or in a tee style school, these would be sort of the first projects that you would begin with as a new student. And really, the ultimate goal is to really just to give you a solid foundational approach to drawing in general. And the benefit of using cast is really that you have an inanimate object that you don't have to worry about shifting or moving like a model. The other benefit is that you also have a very high contrast scenario where we're dealing with a bright plaster cast that is lit with a single light source, and it just gives you a nice, simple value structure to work off of. Now, I'll be taking you through a drawing from start to finish, going through all the different stages in my thought process and how I get to the end result. Now, the one thing to keep in mind is that, generally speaking, cast drawings are a very sort of long sort of approach to drawing where it may take multiple hours, days, sometimes weeks, depending on the cast. So in this, of course, you're going to see all of the videos are sped up for the sake of time. And that way you just get an idea of how I'm beginning and how I work through each separate stage, ultimately resulting in a finish. Now, for those of you new to this kind of drawing or any academic drawing in general. We're going to really focus in on building up the drawing in separate stages. Now, this will allow us to focus on one thing at a time so that we don't feel overwhelmed or we're trying to juggle too many things at once. We'll go from a linear block in stage to a simplified shadow pattern stage where we can just focus on the light and dark effect. From there, we'll move on to modeling form, and I'll go into detail about my thought process and how I like to think about form turning as light is hitting a surface. Throughout the drawing, I'll be working on one section at a time, trying to finish it as I go along. I'll explain some of the pros and cons of working this way. And ultimately, as the drawing gets filled in, we'll be talking about how to make corrections as we go. Some of the things I like to avoid when I do work this way. And Really, by the end of the drawing, the end goal isn't necessarily to have the most beautiful drawing, but it's really about understanding the procedure and the process and to feel comfortable approaching a drawing so that you never feel like you're lost or you don't know where to go. Now, as I mentioned earlier, these kinds of drawings take a decent amount of time. So you really want to be patient with yourself and just allow yourself to follow the process and take as much time as you need. There is no time limit to these, and that's kind of the benefit of doing a cast or any kind of still life where you don't have to worry about a model that is going to leave you. So take your time with the process. And as you work through each individual stage, it'll become more intuitive and you'll be able to move a little bit quicker. But for these first drawings that you do, really just gave yourself the time and be patient and everything will fall into place. Now, by the end of the class, the end goal is to have a completed drawing. And to whatever degree of finish you feel comfortable with is totally okay. My real goal for everyone is to not necessarily show you how to model so that your drawings look like mine, but more so teach you a process that you can follow that you can apply to any drawing that you do. How you decide to finish the drawing is ultimately up to you and kind of your intentions, as well as maybe style preferences or anything like that. But really, by the end of the class, so long as you have something that has a nice light and dark effect, has a nice sense of form, I would consider that a very good success. So follow along the best you can and just try and have fun with the process. Doing these kinds of drawings can maybe seem a little daunting at first. But as long as you follow the various stages that I lay out here, it should be fairly straightforward, and you'll have a much better idea about how to approach any drawing. Thanks for watching. 2. Materials : Now, I wanted to just take a little bit of time to talk about some of the materials that I'm using throughout the drawing. And these are just going to be suggestions, and by no means, do you have to go out and try to look for any of these? These are just some things that might be helpful or beneficial to you if you don't already have something you like to use already. Now, the main thing that I prefer to draw on is a fabriano artistico hot press watercolor paper, and that's this large white sheet that you see here. Now, it's typically sold in larger 2030 sheets that you can get individually, and then I usually like to cut them up into smaller pieces so that way I can do multiple drawings. But It's just a nice smooth surface. It takes pencil very, very well, and it also takes erasing very well so that if you make mistakes, you don't have to worry about messing up the paper too much if you erase very heavily. So that would be my main suggestion if you're able to get it. If not, it's not a big deal. There's multiple sort of papers out there that are available. But I would say you want to find something smooth and not overly toothy or rough paper as it becomes harder to model form on. Now, as an alternative, I actually do really like this Strathmore 400 series drawing paper, and it's typically sold in pads in various sizes. So if you have a preferred size of scale that you'd like to work on, you can probably find a pad of this in an appropriate size. Now, the nice thing about this paper is that it's easily and readily available in art stores online. I've even seen it in craft stores. So it's a fairly common paper, and it's not terribly expensive considering you're getting multiple sheets in a given pad. The other nice thing about it is that it is a relatively smooth surface, and it takes eracing pretty well. Not quite as good as the fabriano, but considering the cost differences, I think this is a great all around drawing paper, and it's something I've used for quite a long time. I've done finished drawings on it, and it works very well. I usually do my block in drawings. If I'm going to transfer a drawing to a nicer sheet of paper or even transfer a drawing from a piece of paper to Canvas, I'll typically do it on this paper, given that it's not terribly expensive. So this is a good all around paper for just about everything, and You know, again, lastly, if it's something that you can't get ahold of or you can't find. So long as you have a paper that is a little bit more durable and on a smoother side, you should be good to go for drawing for this particular class. We just want to try and avoid any rough surfaces because it's just going to be a little bit too difficult to do any sort of shadows or modeling in the final drawing. Now, in terms of pencils, I do find that it is personal preference most of the time. And I would just say that you would want to use anything that you feel comfortable with in the sense of you like how the graphite feels when you use it. And that's going to be different for everyone. So I'm not too particular on brands of pencils by any means. I would just say stick what feels good to you and kind of go from there. Now, I will have some suggestions in terms of the different kinds of lead that you may want to use as you are drawing is because I do find that having a few options is beneficial. Now, for those that you are curious as far as what I'm using, the pencils that I have here are a Mitsubishi uni, which I've used for quite a long time at this point, and I just like the way the lead feels. Then the other is a tomba another pencil that I used when I was in school. I've stuck with these over the years. I like the consistency of the lead. Now, in terms of the grades of pencils, I would say that realistically, you only really need, I would say an HB, an H, and maybe like a two H lead, and I find that that is enough to get everything that you need to make a full value drawing. Now, if you have a preference, maybe for some softer leads like a B or even a two B for say, dark shadows, that's ultimately up to you. Now, outside of that. You know, I do sometimes like these lead extender pencils, just because it kind of allows you to create a little bit of a longer lead than a traditional wooden pencil. And that's just kind of a fun thing to have not necessary, but it's something to consider because you can actually get it to a much finer point, I feel like and have a longer lead as well. But that is something to consider. And again, those would come in different kinds of lead hardnesses as well. Now, mechanical pencils are also nice to have, you know, just for little small areas where it might be a little bit tricky to get in with a sort of normal size pencil lead. Having a really super fine tip can be beneficial for working in certain areas. So it's good to at least have a couple of these around and different size leads. So that would be something else to consider. But, you know, outside of that, you really don't need to have everything. It's just have a good set of pencils and you should be fine. Now, in terms of erasers, a standard needed eraser is kind of what I use for the majority of the drawing, but I occasionally use some of these white plastic erasers, if I needed to take something out that is very clean, or what's also nice too is you can cut them into smaller shapes with eraser and make a little wedge shape and get nice, sort of a fine point that might be harder with a needed eraser to get a super fine point that will hold its shape. So these are handy to have as well. Now, the last thing is just maybe these sort of eraser pen type of tools. I find that these are handy as well, but not necessary, but for certain things where you want to take out, let's say, a highlight, or if you want to just have more control over an eraser and a super fine point, those are beneficial too. The last thing I'll mention is you want to have some sort of measuring tool. And so my default tool that I like to have is just this knitting needle. You can get these at a craft store or just get them online. More importantly, is you want something that has a decent amount of length on it that will also stay straight. So you don't want to have something that will bend or twist or anything like that. You want to have a nice straight line. So a knitting needle, a wooden dowel, Something like that just so that you can hold up and measure to make comparisons and check angles is absolutely necessary in the drawing process. At the worst case scenario, you can use a pencil so long as that it's long enough, but it is sometimes nice to have something a little bit longer. So I would suggest having a knitting needle or like a wooden dowel of some kind to use as a measuring tool. Outside of that, these are pretty much all the materials you would need for a drawing. And again, don't worry about having all the different hardnesses of leads for the pencils. It's nice to just maybe have two or three. You can do an entire drawing with them. Now, there are certain obviously conveniences of having some more tools in your sort of toolbox that you can pull and use. But for the most part, use what you have and don't feel like you have to go out and get a bunch of stuff. We want to just really make it more about the drawing process and what that looks like, and the tools are just kind of secondary. 3. Beginning block in 1: So, as we're beginning the drawing, in my opinion, this is going to be one of the most important steps because the initial marks that you start making on your page are going to set the stage for the rest of the drawing. Now, realistically, depending on your distance between the cast itself, or even if you're working off of a photo, you want to just keep in mind the general scale at which you're working. And so depending on the size of your paper, I would encourage you to work in a reasonable size, especially if you're working in graphite. Most of these drawings, you don't want to go too large, simply because things like filling in shadows and just general modeling can take quite a while if the drawing is too large. But nonetheless, something to consider. So the first couple of things I want to do is I want to find some landmarks, right? So the thing I want to be doing is I want to mark off the top and bottom of where I want the drawing to sit. Now, this can change as I sort of go through this block in process, but I just need something visual to give me a guide, and this is just to serve as a general placement. The next thing, once I have established the top and bottom is I want to find some sort of halfway point and realistically what I want to make a comparison of is I want to find the relative height versus the width and what that relationship looks like. Now, the one thing I'll say is that these early stages is don't be overly committal with these lines. Try and just get something on the page because it's obviously one of the hardest things in my opinion, is just staring at a blank sheet of paper. So just get something on the page, try and make a few quick comparisons, and there's a good chance that you're probably going to be adjusting things, and that's okay because realistically that's what this stage is for. We really before we spend all this time trying to figure out all the other components of the drawing, you know, like you know, the details and kind of the general structure is we want to just get some sort of general silhouette of the cast that we're working from. And so what this silhouette represents is what we would sort of call the envelope in sort of the traditional cast drawing or bark drawing kind of atelier style of working, this outer sort of perimeter would be called the envelope. And really what it's meant to do is it's meant to encapsulate the entirety of what you're drawing, and then you can work into it. Now, the one thing for this particular cast, given that it's just a mouth and it's almost like a cutout, not quite a square, not quite a rectangle, but kind of leaning in that direction. The envelope of this particular drawing is fairly simple. Now, depending on the angle or if it were a different cast or if it were a figure or anything like that, your envelope would look very different. But nonetheless, the whole idea behind this is really just to try and give yourself a perimeter or a border of everything that's going to fit within the drawing. From there, this is when I want to start taking extra measurements and finding those height versus with relationships. Now, you can use a knitting needle like I'm using here. You can use your pencil provided it's long enough or any other sort of tools like a wooden dowel, something long and straight that you can hold out from a distance and make proper measurements. And so what you'll see me do in this early part of the drawing is just constantly measuring against my paper, measuring against the cast, and then slowly starting to add lines so that I can start breaking this down into some of the simple shapes that I'm seeing in front of me. Now, I've added a center line so that I take this large shape and divide it in half. Now, given the vertical of the cast, there's the center line is fairly straightforward. The only sort of axes shift that I see is really the angle of the mouth as it's resting on the form of the cast. So there is going to be a little bit of an angle to the mouth itself, whereas the rest of the cast is going to be more or less vertical. Now, what I'm looking for, again, is from that center line, I want to be able to make left and right comparisons. And so depending on what cast you're working from, this can change a little bit. But given that this is a relatively simple and straightforward cast, I don't have to worry about too much because the cast is facing directly towards me. So in this particular instance, I'm going to be looking for the nodes of the mouth. That way I can find a specific axes line and make sure that things are in the sort of facing the right direction. Things are tilting the way I need to. And I'm going to go ahead and just measure before I put down any lines so that I'm at least, trying to be as accurate as I can at this point, but knowing full well that things might shift or adjust as I continue to work. And so as I find the corners of the mouth, I can use as a way of measuring and testing myself as I'm pulling an angle from the corner of the cast and seeing where it relates to where I think the mouth is. From there with the two points in, I can essentially build an axes line, and you'll see me do this a lot where I'll take one corner of a drawing and try and make a comparison to something else in the drawing. That way can gradually build up my proportions by checking all these different points against each other. In this particular instance, with the two nodes of the mouth here, I can essentially build that axes line so that I have a good idea about where the lips are going to sit. Now, that works for this particular drawing being that again, it's straight on and the lips are the only axes that I have to think about. But this is something I would be doing for pretty much any drawing. When you think about, let's say, you know, how the eyes on a portrait relate to one another or the way you know, a set of shoulders compares to each other or where the hips compare to each other. So regardless of what you're drawing, all of these sort of measuring principles apply. So now, with an axes line for the mouth and a center line, I can essentially use those as a tool to build out the rest of the mouth, since I'll have a very distinct division of left and right, and realistically, if I were to draw the axes of the mouth all the way across, I would essentially have quadrants. Now, they wouldn't be symmetrical because of the angle of the mouth, but that's something to think about. Any way that you can divide sections of your drawing. Make it a little bit more manageable. And this is kind of where you would see in a lot of, you know, old master drawings or paintings or things like that. You would often see grids, placed. And that's really just used as a placement tool and a way of measuring and making comparisons from all over the picture. Now, given we're just focused on this one small element of the cast, I don't need to go to those sorts of extremes, but it is something to keep in mind depending on what you're working on. Now, in terms of flushing out the lips themselves, I'm not trying to think about it too much. I'm just squinting down, looking at the relative shapes that I see trying to use straight lines to construct them. Now, I am obviously ignoring shadows and things like that, and I want to just get the general shape that I see. But again, I'm not looking for anything too specific just yet. Again, this is all very general because we're in these early stages. So we want to just have the freedom to move things around. If something feels off, I want to go ahead and analyze it, and if it needs to be taken out, then I can go ahead and remove it. But for now, I'm just trying to put down some lines and trying to do my best to get the correct angles. And then from there, once I get more information, I can make direct comparisons and make the adjustments if necessary. Really, the big theme of beginning the block in is to start very slow, take your time because this is the initial framework that'll set the stage for the rest of the drawing. If you rush this step, all that means that you're going to probably have to go later on and make corrections, which are going to be a lot harder depending on how far along the drawing you get. So if you invest the time up front right now in this block in, I'll save you time in the end when you get towards the filling in shadows and modeling form because you won't be worrying about a lot of the proportional things that can really affect a drawing early on. So the thing I'll always repeat sort of add asm in these early stages of the drawing is really take your time and make sure everything is correct as you can possibly make it. 4. Continuing the block in: Continuing along. I'm still going to stay in this general phase for quite a while until I get more information established. So I'm not too concerned about getting specific with contours or anything like that. I really want to just continue and add information slowly, make the necessary comparisons and the spacing about how everything is sitting on the cast itself. And if I see things that need to be adjusted, I want to go ahead and do those right away and then try and resolve the rest of the drawing. Now, this will be different depending on the drawing you're working from, how large you're working, how much information you're putting in. But regardless of that, the process is going to remain the same. So I want to be making comparisons as much as I can so that it hopefully allows me to dial in the correct proportions. And so, while, even though there's a decent amount of shadow on the cast itself, I want to try and see past that. So if I see forms that are buried in the shadow, I still want to try and just draw them anyway so that I have a good idea about where things are actually sitting in space. Now, you'll see as I'm continuing, there might be little things in terms of the height and width relationship that need adjusting. So I want to go ahead and account for those. But as I put information in, if something jumps out glaringly, you know, right away to me, just something feels off, I want to try and address it. So in this particular instance, you know, making sure that the outside is the right proportion in relationship to what I'm seeing. In this case, I feel like it needed to be adjusted, so I'm maybe just whiting it a little bit, may have to add things here or there. Now, this will happen as you kind of continue to add information in the drawing, and this is the whole reason that we want to stay in a non committal stage and keep the graphite or, you know, whatever you're drawing with, keep it very, you know, light in these initial stages so that these corrections are not a daunting task. I think the hardest part, especially as you're learning and just getting started with this kind of sort of process is just trying to be objective. And if something just feels right, what I end up doing a lot of the times is if I need to make a correction is I'll go ahead and make the correction first. I'll leave my mistake in the drawing at the same time because I really want to see a direct comparison of what I'm changing. If you just rush in and sort of erase mistakes before you correct them, then the amount of information that you have at your disposal to make an correction is a ti. So I would say that as you work on your drawing in these stages, if you find mistakes, it's totally fine. But leave those mistakes in there, make your correction first and then go ahead and remove that mistake so that you have a very clear idea about what you're changing. Now, as I start adding information, and I start to gain a little bit of clarity about the proportions, I still want to go ahead and as I add new information, I want to go ahead and retake measurements, make sure that angles are sitting properly and make comparisons to other pieces of information that I'm seeing. And I'll continue this process until I feel really good about the overall placement and proportion of everything. Now, the nice thing about doing a cast and a simple cast like this is there's not a whole lot really to make comparisons because there's only so many elements that I have to work on in this particular instance. But if it were something more complex or anything like that, I'd be doing the same thing. It would take a little bit longer to make measurements and comparisons for everything. But as I feel good about where I have placed in the drawing right now, go ahead and start cleaning up some of the lines, and realistically from here, if I'm kind of removing the shadow as part of the equation, and I'm just looking at the lips themselves and how they're sitting on the cast, more or less the key elements of the drawing are on the page. So this will allow me to be very objective making left and right comparisons and seeing the sort of spacing between the lips themselves and relationship to the sides of the cast, the chin itself, which is on this particular cast itself, it's actually kind of large the chin. So all of these little things, I can kind of start making a comparison, and Once I feel good about that, I can maybe add elements of the shadow in the cast so that I can see how that's going to sit before I continue along. 5. Mapping shadows: So with the basic drawing established, at this point, I feel okay to start mapping out the shadows. Now, realistically, I treat this as another component of the drawing, and I'm going through the same process again, except I'm just focusing on the shadow patterns themselves. Everything is still done in line, and I still want to go ahead and measure as I place the shadow patterns on what I have so far. Nothing has really changed at this particular point because I'm not thinking about tone or edges or anything like that. I'm simply just looking at the drawing objectively, looking at where the shadows are sitting on the cast itself and trying to copy those shapes as close as I can. Once I have the actual shadow shapes established, then I still want to go ahead and review the information that I've put down, making sure that the proportions still look correct. Things are sitting in the right place. And what I'll also do a lot of the times is squint my eyes down to try and simplify the shadow patterns so that I don't get caught up in too many details. Now, this certainly will be different for every drawing that you do, but again, the process remains the same. So even if I see something that is maybe a dark half tone, it's like it's not quite super in shadow, but it makes a distinct enough shape as a half tone, then I might actually go ahead and account for that and make a small shape. Now, again, this will vary from drawing to drawing and how significant the light and dark effect is. But again, If there's any information at this particular stage that you feel might benefit you by putting in the drawing, go ahead and put it in there. You know, as long as you're drawing light enough, you always have the freedom to take it out later. But if there's something that stands out to you as a significant shape or something that looks prominent that you might be able to use to help gauge other things in the drawing, go ahead and put that information in and make that decision later if you decide to keep it or remove it. Now, another thing to consider, and this is more of just a personal approach where there are elements of the cast where I see lots of reflected light, and those are the areas where the brightness of the cast is actually making a reflection in the shadow and you see lighter portions in the shadow itself. Now, obviously, I'm aware that they're there, but I like to sort of keep them out of the drawing at this early stage because what I really want to try and capture is the overall graphic effect of what I'm seeing and where the shadows are sitting. Now, again, this is going to be a personal choice. If you feel like mapping out the reflected light is going to help you, then go ahead and put it in. You know, in this particular instance, the shadow shapes themselves are relatively simple, and I don't have to really think about it too much. If it were maybe a more advanced cast or anything like that, it might be something to consider. But sort of again, that's a personal choice. But realistically, just think. And again, squinting your eyes can help a lot to simplify some of these shapes down so that you get that nice graphic effect. And then from there, we can decide to go back in, and if we need to make small adjustments to where the shape is or maybe there's more, you know, there's more undulation in the shape or little things that are standing out, go ahead and put in the things that you feel are necessary and that might potentially help you. 6. Finishing the block in: So now that we've filled in the shadow patterns, I can more or less start to refine what I have on the page. Now, this can mean a lot of things, and I would say everyone's sort of finish blocking will look different. And a part of that is not only just the way you draw, but also too, what kind of information that you feel is necessary for you so that you have a clear understanding about where to go from here. Now, the one thing I'll do in regards to finishing a block in is realistically start cleaning up the drawing, and if there's any little bits of information that I put in maybe at an earlier point that no longer need to be there, I'll go ahead and take those out. If I feel that any of my lines have gotten too thick where they're almost kind of like a small edge or maybe certain lines have gotten a little dark or anything like that is I gradually take an eraser and start to trim those lines down so that I have a clean or as clean of a block in as I could possibly get. Now, again, this is going to look different for everyone. So, you know, you can use my drawing here as an example of what I might consider a completed block in that's ready to take to the next stage. But again, this is going to look different for everyone. Now one thing you'll notice is that I do try and maintain a lot of angular straight lines throughout the drawing as for me that always sort of has a sense of structure. And I find that helpful for me. And the thing is too, is that one thing I will say is that as you start adding tone to the drawing, things will naturally start to soften. So while some people will see this and say, like, Wow, that's really sort of angular and, you know, kind of squarish looking or anything like that, that's totally fine. Again, there's going to be certain things that are going to look different for you and how you draw and, you know, everyone else. But The key takeaways that I would say is that you want to account for all the information that you think is going to be necessary for the drawing. So obviously, at this point, we've measured height versus width, proportions, angles, we've mapped the shadow patterns. And I've tried to include any other information that I feel that is going to be really necessary for the drawing. Now, again, this will depend not only on your drawing style, but also the cast that you're drawing or, again, whatever you're drawing. This is going to be different for everyone. So as long as you feel comfortable moving to the next stage and you feel like you've accounted for everything that you might need, then you're going to be in a good place. Now, the one thing I'll say is that it doesn't mean that there's not going to be corrections that still may happen over the course of the drawing. But I would say an ideal scenario is that you've done your best to try and account for any proportional things that are going to be glaringly off. There's always going to be little things that sort of pop up as you continue to work on the drawing. And again, this is also one of the important reasons why it's sometimes good to kind of take long breaks, get away from the drawing, you know, come back another day with a fresh pair of eyes, reassess the drawing before you go on to the next crucial stage, because at this point, as we begin to maybe add some tone to the drawing. We are getting to that sort of predicament where if there's any changes that need to be made that are significant, we want to try and avoid having to do that while there's any sort of dark tone on the paper. So that's just something to keep in mind as you're working. I have no doubt that there's going to be little things that I fix along the way, but I want to feel good about what I've established so far and that everything is more or less in the right place and the shadows are accounted for and any other little thing that again, might be something that might give me trouble later or anything that I've made sure that I've kind of included that in the block in stage. Outside of any of those things I mentioned, again, the last thing I'll emphasize is try and make the drawing at this point as clean as you can possibly make it. So if that means having to trim your lines down with a very, you know, sort of pen style eraser or if you have to maybe just pat your eraser down on certain areas to just lighten the overall look of some of the lines, go ahead and do that because at this next stage, we're going to be adding some tone, and we want to be able to control everything in a very nice and organized fashion. So anything that jumps out is too thick or too dark in terms of line quality, we want to try and resolve that before moving forward. Okay. 7. Block in checkpoint: So at this stage of the block in, everything should be a very sort of simplistic line drawing. I would say realistically, this is the most important aspect of the drawing and you'd want to spend a good amount of your time really perfecting this stage. Now, this is going to mean different things to different people. But what I would say is you want to have a very clear and concise two D drawing that shows all of the plane changes or a little angle breaks in the drawing, mapped out shadows, no tone whatsoever, but you really want to make sure that everything is clearly laid out for you so that as you enter into the next stage of flattening shadows, you have a very clear idea about where the drawing needs to go. So depending on, you know, which cast you've chosen to draw, you really want to just have as best you can, a nice, clean line drawing. Now, this means you may want to clear up any lines or edges where they might be too thick, erase any imperfections and try and just get it as best you can. This is going to be important only from the standpoint that this is setting the stage for the rest of the drawing. You don't really want to have any second guesses about any of the proportional or measurement issues that you may have in the very beginning. You want all of that resolved so that as you move on to the next stage, you don't have to think about those things and you can focus on the next stage itself. 8. Values concept: I wanted to do a short little video about the concept of value and how I like to bring values up using graphite as I feel that it might be helpful for some people who haven't done a lot of work in the medium. Now, the one thing to keep in mind is that with graphite, there are lots of different hardnesses of lead ranging from the middle ground of I would say, H B all the way up to 2b3b4 b and, and then also going in the hardness scale with HHH, et cetera. So depending on how you build up your drawing, it's nice to have a variety of leads for different reasons. Now, generally speaking, as I'm working, a lot of the times I'll be filling in shadows with initially an HB lead, maybe a B, depending on how dark I need to go. And then as I continue to build up the value, I will start using harder leads on top of it, like an H or even a two H in some instances. This is also true as I build up values in the lights as well. So that's not including shadow values and things like that, but this is also including values in the light side of the form. Now, the other thing to keep in mind is that value is essentially a relative thing. And now, because we're using essentially pencils and paper to try and create a three dimensional effect, we don't have the expansive range of nature per se. We're very limited by our materials. So in that sense, we have to work in a finite range of compression, meaning that We need to establish a range that we can work in so that we can create the effect that we're after. So if I establish a value, if let's say for the shadows, for example, then that's going to be sort of a range that I'm establishing for my mid tones and my light values. Now, the darker that shadow value is, the more expansive of a range I have to work with. The lighter that shadow value is, then the lighter my overall mid and light values are going to be as well. Now, the important reason to know all of this is because by understanding that value concept, it allows you to create different effects. So if I wanted a really sort of high contrast, you know, sort of chiaroscuro effect in the drawing, I would aim for a very dark shadow value. And that would sort of expand that range so that I would sort of have everything in between, let's just say a black all the way to, let's say, a white highlight. Now, if I wanted to create a different sort of atmosphere or effect, my shadow values, for example, could be a lighter overall value. And then that means I would also have to lower my mid and light values. So when you start looking at, say, softer drawings or anything like that, that you know, maybe they don't have a full value range, but having more of a moderate value range creates a different sort of feeling and effect. Now, one of the reasons you see in a lot of these academic drawings like bark drawings and cast drawings as you have this full value range is the larger range that you have, let's say, using, let's say black as the darkest value. It just gives you a lot more freedom and opportunity to turn form as you're working because you have this very dark range that you can build out of and roll into a light piece of form working up to a highlight. Now, if it were a more moderate value drawing, it doesn't mean that you couldn't necessarily do that. It's just you have less overall resources to try and create that effect because the darkest value may not be very close to black. So that's something to keep in mind as you're working. Now, again, in the context of what we're doing in this exercise of a cast drawing, we're going to have a full value range to work with. But let's say you're working on a personal project and you want to have a different kind of feeling to that drawing. Then, you know, that's kind of where you have some wiggle room to decide the overall value range that you want to work in. Now, the one thing to keep in mind with graphite, again, as I start to fill in a shadow shape with, let's say, an HB or an H lead, I don't like to go too soft when filling in shadows, and that's just a personal preference because the softer the lead, what ends up happening is that you have all of this grain of the paper that affects the lead, and it just means you're going to have to go back over that shadow multiple times in order to completely flatten it. Now, again, depending on the effect that you're after, you may want some of that grain to come through, but it needs to be consistent. So if it's, you know, flat in other sections of shadow versus the other, then it kind of breaks the overall effect of the drawing. So what I would be aiming for is a nice, even flat shadow. And so you can see here and what I've built so far, there's still some of that grain of the paper that's showing through. And for this particular exercise, I would aim for something that looks more flat. And so how do we go about doing this? And then this is where other leads become important. So for example, a lot of the times in my drawing, I like to start with an HB and then gradually just darken as far as I can go. And then If I still see some grain kind of coming through that shadow shape, I'll switch over to a harder lead, like an H, and in some instances, a two H. It really just depends. The other thing to keep in mind is as I'm building up the shadow value, I'm never pressing too hard. All I'm really doing is just gradually layering it, but I'm never trying to force my way into a dark value because what'll end up happening is if you push too hard on the paper, you could very well score the paper, and then you'll see those lines. If you kind of were to hold your drawing in the light and if you press too hard to create a dark value, you kind of score the paper, and that's something that we want to try and avoid. So my general practice to build up my shadow, to try and get it nice and even and flat, start with about an HB and then keep going as far as you can. And then if it's still not quite as flat as you'd like or as dark as you'd like, gradually layer in an H, maybe in a two H, if you have to, but I find for me, I can get fairly close to a black value with an HB and an H. I've never really felt the need to go to something like a B or a two B to really get those really dark values. It's certainly maybe helpful to have some softer leads for dark accents. But I find with just those two leads, I can get mostly what I need from my drawing to where I don't have to deviate too much. That's just something to keep in mind as you're building up your shadows and we move on to the next stage of the drawing. 9. Flattening shadows: So I wanted to briefly discuss the concept of flattening your shadows from the initial block in stage. Now, our main goal here is ultimately just to create a very simple light and dark effect. I'm not going to be thinking about edges or anything too fancy like that. I want to just keep it very simple so that I don't have to juggle too many things at once. Now, I do want to account for some of the reflected light that I see and maybe any details that could potentially get lost. This will vary from drawing to drawing and kind of your personal preference. So do what feels best for you. But ultimately what we want to end up with is a nice simple light and dark. Now, how you choose to build up the value is up to you. I'm starting off with the HB lead as my darkest sort of value. Now, you could prefer to start with a B. And then as I kind of fill in the shadows, I'm going to gradually switch over to an H in a two H so that you'll see as you start to fill in large masses of graphite, you're going to be left you know, maybe some potential noise or grain in the paper. And the way we want to work around that is we want to just keep layering the graphite slowly. So as I kind of exceed my range with an HB, then I'm going to switch over to an H and then maybe in certain areas a two H so that I can get as flat of a shadow as I can possibly get. Ultimately, I do think there's a personal preference for how flat your shadows do get and how much time you want to spend doing it. I will say that darkening a large piece of shadow in graphite can be rather time consuming, so you're not going to see me fill this in from start to finish. So Realistically, though, depending on the size of your drawing, it could take a few hours just to simply flatten a shadow. That said, I will say that it is worth investing the time up front because that initial value that you establish is going to set the stage for the rest of the drawing. So depending on how light or dark you go is also going to establish the range in which you're going to be able to turn form. Now, the nice part about a cast is that it's obviously a bright white sort of plaster. And then, so we get these really nice high contrast shadows. So we want to use that to our advantage. And I would say, try and aim for a darker value, maybe even darker than you think. You may not want to go to a jet black because you want to still have some room for any accents that are deep in the shadow or anything like that. But get it dark enough so that you have the nice range to work into as you build out into your lights. It's just something to think about. But the next video I'll show you kind of where we end up with and then go from there. 10. Shadow values explained: So you can see here after filling in my shadow, this is ultimately what I left myself with. Now, you can see that I've gotten relatively dark, but I've left myself some room for the reflected light that I see so that I at least have a little bit of play so that if I need to make some adjustments or anything like that, I'm giving myself some breathing room. So now, depending on the cast that you're working from, you know, you do want to account for things like reflected light or any little potential accents. Ideally, the goal is that if you feel that there's going to be any areas where you could potentially get lost in the shadows, give yourself a little bit of wiggle room so that you at least have some lines or some areas that you leave a little more open so that you can work on them later as you get further along in the drawing. But you don't want to just completely obliterate the entire shadow with just a single value, if you do have things like reflected light or any accents that you may want to put in later. Now, all of that said, you can still see that in the darkest portions of the shadow on the left hand side of the drawing. I've gone relatively dark. And now, even though this may appear like a black value on screen in person and in reality, given that it's an HB lead, there's still quite a bit of room for me to go into if I need to go darker later down the road. And so the idea is that you don't want to completely exhaust your value range and get a jet black value in the shadow right out the gate. You want to give yourself that room to have a few more little bits of darker value if necessary. But you do want to go dark enough that again, you're establishing the overall range so that as we begin to work into the lights and start to model the form around the shadows, we have enough of a range to really establish the turning of form to a good degree. And again, the important thing too, you can see is I've left myself a good bit of room for the reflected light. And odds are, I'm going to go back in and make some adjustments to the shapes so that they're a little bit closer. But the way I look at it is in this early stage, I'm still being somewhat cautious, and so I want to just give myself a bit of play in those areas so that if I do need to make let's say the reflected light at bit smaller or larger, I have a bit of room to play with, and I'm not overly committing too soon. And realistically for this particular area, you know, the shadow shape itself is relatively simple, so I don't have to worry about too many details per se. If this was a more complicated cast and let's say there was, like, you know, hair or, you know, let's say if it was, like, a figure related cast, then, you know, things might be a little bit more complicated. But given that it's a relatively straightforward shadow, I can kind of keep track of everything in a very sort of confined area. So again, just kind of trying to make sure that I'm accounting for any things like reflected light and just giving myself a little bit of extra room to play just in case. And again, the last thing I'll mention is that this was all brought up with an HB lead, believe it or not. You know, I didn't really use a B lead or it actually is just an HB lead followed by some H and two H in certain areas. So again, you don't necessarily need to pull out the really soft pencils like a B or a two B to get a dark enough value. The whole point of building up the value slowly is that you can still gradually use an HB and get a dark enough value, you don't have to really dig in there and use a softer lead to get this dark. So again, it's really just about slowly building up the values. You never want to rush in and just try and push harder to create these darker values. You want to just gradually build them up, which is why it can take some time. Now, all that said, though, given that I have a nicely established value now, It's less thing I have to worry about as I move forward in the drawing. So from here on out, we can really start to focus on just building out the forms, and I won't really have to come back to this shadow too much at this point. Now, later on in the drawing, I may kind of do some touch ups here and there, but nonetheless, at this point, we can start moving on to the light side of the drawing. 11. Flattening checkpoint: So, at the end of the flattening stage, what we want to have is a nice, simplified poster effect of the light and dark patterns that you see on the cast. Now, the one thing to keep in mind is that you do want to have your shadows dark enough so that you're creating yourself enough range to work into the lights, and then you can get a nice rolling of form as you reach to the brighter portions of the cast. Now, the tricky part is is that you don't want to go so dark that you don't give yourself any room for any dark accents or, let's say, reflected light in the shadows. So it's kind of trying to find a balance where you go dark enough to where you do set yourself up to work into the lights and a reasonable pace, but you still want to have a little bit of room left over to go back into the shadows, if necessary to hit any really dark accents. So what we're trying to do is just give ourselves enough of a base to work from so that it makes working in the lights that much easier. But we don't want to go so light that we're going to have to basically go back into the shadows and basically go further and further with them. And then it's like we're working on two parts of the drawing simultaneously. The idea here is that we want to complete each stage as its own individual process. That way we can focus one thing at a time. From there, once we have that nice shadow stage, we really just want to focus our attention on the lights until we get all of the forms resolved, and then we can maybe revisit certain things after the drawing is completely filled in. 12. Intial form pass checkpoint: Now, before you begin your initial form pass, you may want to take a moment and really decide where you want to begin the drawing before you get too far ahead of yourself. And what I mean by this is, is you want to find some sort of strategy in the drawing so that you're not just jumping around from place to place, trying to solve different areas simultaneously. And you'll see how I work in the videos that I start to strategically work from one area and try and resolve it from start to finish as best I can before moving on. Now, the way I like to think about this is starting from, let's say, a dark shadow that will ultimately reach to a brighter passage. That way, I have a good sense of what the form is doing from a dark to a light perspective. Now, this is going to be different on every single drawing. So I don't want to make any sort of blanket rules or anything like that, but it's something to consider before you start. So depending on which cast you're drawing and depending on the lighting scenario that you decide to go ahead and work with, You want to sort of plan out your drawing and how you're going to model through the various sections of the drawing before getting started. That way, you're getting a little bit of a roadmap for yourself and you're not just jumping back and forth all over the place. In the videos, I'll kind of talk about what I like to do in the particular cast that I'm drawing, and you'll watch me go ahead and work that from beginning to end. 13. Beginning the form pass: So now that our shadows are fully established, we can begin the form pass. Now, the one thing I want to mention is that there's a couple of ways that you can approach doing this. Now, one thing that was always explained when I was in school is that you would maybe want to start the form pass in an area of the drawing where you would have a darker value shadow that would work all the way up to a light source. Now, depending on the drawing and the cast and the lighting scenario, this may not always be an option. So realistically, it's kind of what you feel is the best option for you. Now, my suggestion and this is more of my own personal preference is I'm always a fan of working out of a shadow and connecting it to other areas in the drawing that will gradually lead towards the light. Now, some people like to maybe start on the light side and gradually work towards the dark. It really is a personal preference and kind of what you feel comfortable with. For me, I've always felt it a little bit easier to just gradually build out of a shadow and slowly start to turn the form as I go along. Now, again, depending on the area of the drawing, for instance, in this cast, this left side is rather dark overall. So that's an area that I feel a little bit more comfortable with, and I'll be able to connect the lower shadow here in the lower left hand corner to the shadow in the mouth. So it's going to be a very easy bridge for me to make. Now, once I get to the right hand side of the cast, there's a lot less shadow that's available for me to work out of. So, in my opinion, for this particular drawing, the right hand side of the cast is going to prove to be a little bit more challenging. So as a weight of just warming up my hand and getting started with this drawing, I'm going to start in this lower portion of the shadow and gradually work sort of clockwise as I build out the drawing. Now, one thing I'll mention is that as I'm working, I like to stick to one area and gradually finish it as I go before I start creeping up around to the next section of the drawing. I try not to jump around, you know, from one side of the drawing to the other or skip over to certain areas. It's just in my opinion, it's kind of just a bad habit. But you know, it is ultimately a working preference. But for this style of drawing, I would say, stick to an area and just gradually work in sort of stages in one area and gradually move on to the next. And so you want to try and finish each area as you're modeling in the light. Get it as close to finish as you possibly can. Now, I understand that's much easier said than done, but that is sort of the mindset that you want to give yourself as you're working in the light side of the drawing. Realistically, by the time the drawing gets filled in, you're going to probably have to go back into other areas you've drawn before and maybe make some adjustments, and that's totally normal and expected. Now, the nice part about working this way is that you're sort of gradually see the drawing coming to life as you're working because you're taking that time to finish off sections, and you're kind of just carving this form out with your pencil. And it's kind of a satisfying effect because if you were to just sort of jump around and not really build up an area, you never really get that gratification until the very end where you're kind of finishing everything. But by gradually working from section to section, you're able to kind of see the drawing slowly evolve to a finish resolution in small pieces at a time. So it does take perhaps a little bit longer to see that final effect because you're sort of finishing as you go. But the trade off is you actually get to see sort of the drawing come to life, you know, as you're doing it. So what I'm thinking is, as I'm sort of building this out with my pencil, I'm always asking myself in my head, where is the light source and this particular portion of the cast, where is it facing and how is the light affecting it? So I'm not necessarily chasing a specific value for the light areas of the drawing per se, but I'm always asking myself in the back of my mind, you know, how is the light source hitting this piece of the cast in this particular area. Is the portion of the cast facing away from the light source. What orientation is, you know, is it facing upwards, downwards, left, right? So I'm asking myself those kinds of questions so that I'm not getting caught up asking myself like, what value is this? Because ultimately, we can't necessarily just copy what we're seeing because we just don't have enough bandwidth with just pencil and paper to do so. So we kind of have to think about what range we've established with our shadow pattern and realistically, sort of how is the light affecting the form that we're working on. And if you approach it from that mindset and you eliminate sort of just the question of value per se, in one sense simplifies the process so that you're not getting caught up with what you're seeing, but you're sort of analytically approaching the drawing from a standpoint of how is the light affecting this object in space? That might sound confusing at first because most people approach the drawing process simply from, you know, what value something is, what kind of edge quality is and things like that. And that's totally fine. It's sort of a different approach to drawing. But, you know, as we go along, I'll kind of explain this concept a little bit more. But the way we want to sort of approach this is that we don't want to just copy what we're seeing. We're kind of interpreting what we're seeing based off of what's in front of us. But I'm trying to think about again, how is the light hitting this area? What is happening in space in this particular area, and then try and draw that. The other way to think about it is think about if you were sculpting this out of clay, except we're just using a pencil instead. So we're trying to just carve out each little section slowly, and sort of each pencil mark, as we work through various portions of the drawing is trying to describe that. And so you can kind of see that maybe concept in the sense of how I'm just drawing in tiny little sections as I go. Now, granted, this drawing is sped up significantly because otherwise, this would be a much, much longer video. But nonetheless, you know, you can still gradually see me just sort of chisel away from section to section. And I'm going to essentially be doing that throughout the entire drawing. And, you know, towards the end, I will go ahead and have to go back in certain areas and do touch ups here and there. But, you know, as we get started making this initial form pass, I'm just going to be working slowly up down this left hand side of the cast. And again, just trying to finish each little section as I go. In terms of the pencil I'm using so far in the light, most of it's going to be done primarily with an H lead. And then as I kind of finish through that, I'll use a two H. And in some instances, I may even pull out a four H. Now, again, because I'm trying to finish as I go along, As you start filling in passages, you will end up with little specks of graphite. And so you'll see me take my eraser and just gradually pick out any dots, and that's just so that I can keep everything nice and clean. The more noise you have in the light, very similar in the sense of the shadow is it will kind of break the illusion of that form in the drawing. A little inconsistencies as I'm putting the pencil down or any little dots. I'll go ahead and pick those out so that I can keep the drawing clean. 14. Form Pass continued: So as I continue to build out this area, one thing you may start to notice is that this value to you might appear to be on the darker side, even though it's in the light side of the form. Now, again, the thing we're trying to avoid thinking about is I'm not concerned or thinking about the value per se, but again, more about where this piece of form is in relationship to the light and how it's being affected by the light. The other tricky part about drawing this way is that because we're working in such a small section is we don't really have a whole lot of context about how this area I'm working on is going to look in relationship to the other parts of the drawing. So that is something that you do sort of have to factor as you're working on the particular sections. However, the one thing I'll suggest to think about is always be sort of darting your eyes back and forth across your drawing. So if you know, kind of, let's say, for example, where the brightest areas, or let's say for example, where highlights are living on the drawing, you can start to ask yourself like, Okay, well, relative to this light side of this drawing or relative to the highlight in the drawing, What is that, you know, in relationship to the area I'm working on now? Because what I find in the past is that sometimes students will make things too light in a drawing so that they're exhausting their room by the time they get to the highlights. So for example here, is if I were to make this value, You know, let's say, significantly lighter. Then by the time I get to the other side of the drawing where all my highlights are or the brightest portions of the drawing are, I won't have any room to go there, right? So that's something I'm keeping in mind as I'm working, but I'm also again thinking about, well, okay, this particular portion of the cast is essentially furthest away from the light source. And it's also gradually turning away, you know, where the chin and the side of the face or the mouth is turning it's turning away from the light source. So in terms of an orientation standpoint, these values are actually going to be relatively dark because of how the light is hitting that top portion of the lip, you know, and then hitting a little bit of the lower lip. And, you know, you know, throughout the rest of the drawing, you can see where the light is hitting and how it's falling on the cast. So this particular area of the drawing, realistically from how it's oriented, is going to be much darker. But again, it's hard to make that judgment right now because we don't have a lot to compare it to. So there is a little bit of a sort of leap of faith, if you will, as you kind of start the first initial pass, you know, of the form. So that's something to keep in mind as you're working and, you know, what cast you're drawing from that depending on, you know, what portion of the drawing you start to begin your modeling on. Always keep in mind, and ask yourself, okay, well, where is the most light facing part of this cast or piece of form that I'm working on? And in relative comparison, you know, where is the darkest portion, you know? And so you want to be going back and forth, even though you may not be drawing those two different sections simultaneously, you still want to be able to look at your drawing, look at the cast, and make those comparisons so that you have a better idea about how far you need to go in a given section as you're working? In my opinion, this was one of the hardest parts for me to sort of come to terms with as I was learning how to draw this way is because it's very easy to get caught up in trying to just replicate what you're seeing and not thinking objectively about how light and form are interacting relative to what you're seeing in front of you. So it is sort of something that becomes a way of thinking, and you just get better at it by practicing just like anything else. So kind of just keep that in the back of your mind as you're working that I want to just objectively ask myself, how is this form turning? How is this area compared to other parts of the drawing? And what do I need to get it so that ultimately at the end of the day, I want the drawing to look round. So regardless of how I manipulate my values or anything like that. The goal is to just have a nice three dimensional effect, and I want to get there by any means possible. Now, even though there's not a whole lot done yet at this point, you can see how you've just gradually built up this area, you know, in little sort of sections. And that's kind of what I was saying earlier is that you want to just be able to find stopping points in areas of the drawing where you feel like you can just connect things from one to the other. The other tricky part about this, however, is that as you kind of make these small little areas with the graphite is you have the potential to create little seams. You know, sort of it's sort of like you're stitching these areas together to try and create a piece of form. However, what ends up happening is that over time, as you're working in an area for a little bit, you kind of create these little seams, where you kind of see where you're attaching sections from one to the other. So very similar to how I mentioned earlier, is that as you build up passages of graphite, you can end up with little dots or specs, you know, in these large areas, and you want to be able to pick those out, you know, with your eraser so that everything looks clean and seamless. The same thing applies to any sort of seam, as you're working from section to section and you're stitching them all together. You may end up with little linear seams in the graphite, and so you want to just take your eraser and clean those out as you go along as well. The end goal idea, obviously, is that we want to just have this one continuous piece of form happening all throughout the drawing so that it doesn't break that effect. So any little imperfections in the graphite, especially as we get to the lighter sides of the drawing is going to be very important. So, you know, continue as you work throughout the drawing, just keep cleanliness in the back of your mind, and any little thing that jumps out or sticks out like specs or lines, go ahead and remove those out with your eraser as soon as you see them. 15. Dealing with irregularities : So as you're working on your drawing, again, depending on the cast and the lighting situation that you're working with, you may come across irregular kind of instances where you're not quite sure about the form, how it's turning or you may have a hard time visualizing how light might be affecting that space. Now, ideally, this is why working from life is always the best case scenario because you can actually go up to the object or the cast or whatever you're drawing, you can go up to it and actually look and walk around it. Now, if we're working from a photo, this is going to be a little bit harder to interpret. So that is one sort of aspect where if you're able to either invest in buying a cast or, you know, even just if it's a regular, you know, still life object that you're working from, if you can put something in front of you and light it and try to draw it, you'll always have the benefit of getting up, looking at it, walking around it, you know, and sometimes we would even put our pencil, you know, on the actual object itself to see what sort of orientation, you know, the object or the cast was facing. But. Regardless, sometimes you'll find these little irregularities where you'll see the values kind of shifting and you're not quite sure why. It might be more obvious in certain areas. Like for example, in this particular cast, the upper left hand side, there's kind of some very specific shapes of how the cast is cut, and you can kind of see some of those little form changes happening. Through the lower part of the portion that I'm working on right now, I see it happening a little bit, but it's going to be a little bit hard to describe, I think, where it's going to break the effect of the form that I'm seeing. So I'm going to probably simplify that down. Now, again, this is something that will change from cast to cast, lighting situations, et cetera. So but it's something to keep in mind as you're working that if you're having a hard time describing something, try and simplify it down first. And then if you have to go back in later and make small adjustments to get it more accurate, go ahead and do that. The one thing you do want to avoid, however, is you don't want the piece of form you're working on to sort of look spotty or inconsistent or not really kind of describing the area that you're trying to draw. So if you kind of find yourself getting caught up in all of these tiny little undulations or sub forms, you want to be thinking about the big picture. So you want to try and capture what is the overall are form that I'm working? Is it a flat surface? Is it a round surface? Is it more cylindrical? You know, then again, this is kind of why thinking about how something is facing the light, its orientation. And again, if you are drawing from life, having the ability to walk around it and actually see the depth and the curvature of a piece of form is very beneficial. But again, working from a photo, if that's kind of what we have to work with, then that's something you kind of have to sort of visualize in your head about how this particular piece of form is working in space? The tricky part, I would say, is that round forms are generally very obvious, right? Because you can kind of tell as something is turning in and out of space. When you get two forms that are more subtle or maybe slightly flatter that turn into a rounded form, then it gets a little trickier. So you just kind of have to do the best you can and you see kind of what is going on around the things that you're trying to draw, and that might give you some clues about the context of the overall form that you're trying to draw. But again, I would say the idea is don't get caught up in smaller sub forms too soon, try and capture the large effect first and then come back to those smaller sub forms if they even need to be there. So as you can see here, just kind of keeping this area nice and even. Again, even though I see some maybe potential sub forms in there. I kind of want to just keep it fairly simple and think about the larger overall form that I'm working on. Again, as I get to maybe later in the top upper left hand portion, there are some maybe more major sub forms that I'm seeing. But for nail along this sort of shadow area as it's connecting to this piece of form, I want to just kind of keep it nice and simple so that I'm not getting too caught up in any minor details or sub forms. I know it can be very tempting at first to try and put in all of this information. But you end up sort of sacrificing the larger hole for the smaller pieces if you get caught up in sub forms too early. In this particular instance, given the overall structure of this cast is there's really not a lot of major things going on. It's a relatively simple cast because we're dealing with just a single feature in a few surrounding areas. So I don't want to get caught up in smaller sections because the important thing is going to be the lips themselves and the overall light effect as it's hitting the mouth, and then I would say even the large portion of the chin. Those are sort the dominant forms in this particular cast that I'm seeing. So I really want to put the majority of emphasis on that and describe those forms the best I can. 16. Large forms over sub forms: As I'm getting closer to the top left of this portion of the cast, again, you'll kind of see these smaller little undulations in that flat portion as it's kind of curving away from, you know, from the mouth and kind of the lips there. So I do maybe want to account for those, but I'm going to be very careful as I kind of work up to that. For the most part, what I've established so far has been relatively straightforward and even. But now as I kind of get to this portion where we're getting to where the mouth is sort of coming into contact with the forms around it. We're going to start to be seeing some smaller sub forms take place, a little bit more undulation in certain areas. So I do want to account for those because I feel that those are a little bit more prevalent. But anything that's smaller than that, so far, I'm not really trying to keep track or take account of those. Now, if you decided to draw the ear or the eye, I feel like those particular casts are much more sub form heavy. And for those kinds of things, you would probably want to account for them much more. I would say this particular cast, the mouth, as well as the nose, are going to be much more straightforward in terms of being larger forms and don't quite have as much going on as the ear and the eye. So that's something to keep in mind, depending on which cast you decide to draw, or if you eventually decide to do all of them, there's some slight little discrepancies in each of the casts. One thing I do keep in mind, you know, as I'm working is that I just try not to over think about what I'm drawing per se. So I'm not really thinking about how the lips are connected to the mouth or anything like that. All I'm really asking again, myself is is the light source? How is it hitting this particular piece of form? Is the form rounded. Is it flattening out? How is it curving around, you know, and, you know, where is the light? Is the light able to hit this particular portion of the cast as much as, let's say, the opposite side. And then I'm just making those judgments based off of that. So again, as I work into the upper left hand corner here, there's going to be some smaller sub forms that I'm going to probably want to account for because they do sort of stick out a bit more to me. That said, though, I still want to be thinking about the overall larger structure underneath and then just gradually introduce those subforms as I'm working? So this area right here is what I was talking about, where you can kind of see some of these sub forms, you know, they're not overly prominent, but I do see some of that information there. So I do want to account for it because I feel like that's important as it kind of comes into contact with this shadow through this area. So if you see things like this and if you squint down your eyes and they still sort of stand out as being a more prominent component of the area that you're working on, then that's sort of an indication that, well, you know what, we probably want to go ahead and include that in there. Now, the other important thing through this area too is also this little line that I've established, and it's really just to account for where the shadow is sort of coming into contact with the upper lip. But that upper lip is also separating from that sort of side portion of the mouth too because the lips are actually protruding off the front plane of the face. So if we think about the mouth itself, is sitting on this sort of cylindrical form as it's coming into contact of the front plane of the face and sort of the nodes of the mouth are kind of suggesting where this ball shape is kind of coming into contact here, and the chin itself, too, is also another form and another ball shape that is protruding off the front plane of the face. So I've kind of given myself a little bit of a line through that area, and you can kind of see the separation that's taking place in this part. 17. Simultaneous contrast: As I begin to finish up this area in the upper left hand, I'm going to start working towards the filtrm above the mouth. And in this general area, we're going to start running into a little bit more complicated things to tackle. And really what I mean by that is we're going to be talking about the idea of simultaneous contrast. And what that really means in a nutshell is that Things are going to start to look a little different in the sense that when we're making a comparison of one area of this cast to another, and in this particular instance, the filter area is a rather bright area, right? So if we start thinking about, okay, we're getting closer towards the light source, we're maybe seeing a little bit of highlights here and there. So we're starting to see this elevated level of light in this area. But now, in the given context, we also have this area around it, that I know has to be darker so that the light becomes more obvious. Now, the question is, well, how light or how dark do I go? Again, because we're not trying to copy what we're seeing, and we're trying to think about where things are sitting in space and the orientation of the light. I know that the light is coming from the top right hand side. Based off of where things are sort of I'm seeing highlights and brighter areas of the cast. So that's something that I'm always considering as I'm working. However, the sort of tricky part is that my eye is going to want to trick me into thinking that certain areas are either lighter or darker than they appear because we have these two contrasted areas that are right next to each other. And so there's a lot of areas in the drawing. More so on the light side of the cast, where we're going to see this sort of simultaneous contrast taking place. Now, the tricky part is, again, is just trying to get away from the idea that we're trying to copy what we're seeing, and we're trying to really just interpret and think logically about what's happening on the surface, what is happening with the light, and how is that hitting these pieces of form. So other areas that we're going to see this happen are kind of in this little area in the upper lip, you know, that little pocket of light that you see, you're going to sort of want to make it lighter. Based off of what we're visually seeing, but realistically, the only reason that shape looks light is because it's surrounded by so much shadow. Same thing on the opposite side where we're looking at the right hand side of the cast. You know, there's a few dark areas here and there, and our tendency is going to want to make them much darker than what we appear, and the only reason they appear darker is because they're surrounded by so much light, and that's kind of the more light facing side of the cast. So depending on the areas that you're drawing, this is something that we'll always have to account for. So you want to be asking yourself again, Don't think about, you know, the values that you're seeing and trying to copy that, especially in these lighter areas that are surrounded by portions. And depending on the cast you're working from, this can really take place in a number of areas, always, you know, the light source being dependent on how, you know, the object is lit. But nonetheless, you know, the same thing can happen all over a given cast, portrait, whatever you're drawing. So, even as I inch towards the philtrum here, you know, the tendency is going to want to sort of really darken this area around it, and I kind of have to be careful because, you know, sort of in the back of my mind, I'm thinking like, Oh, you know, this particular area is very bright, it's very lit. But how am I going to convey that, you know, you know, with my pencil? And, you know, so the first sort of thing that you might think as an automatic response is that, a, well, In order to make something look bright, I need to darken these other things around it. And that would be sort of the first thing that might come to your mind as you're working. But again, I kind of want to ignore that impulse. I want to a thinking a little bit more about, well, realistically, what is the sort of the average of the drop off of light, you know, as I'm kind of working in this general area. I mean, this particular portion of the cast is realistically, it is facing away slightly away from the light source, but not nearly as much as some of the other portions we've already drawn. So it realistically can be as dark, right? So these are kind of the questions I'm asking myself, and As you're working, you want to just kind of have this sort of inner dialogue with yourself and try to just objectively think about what's going on on the surface, right? And that's going to at least be a little bit of a guide as to where you need to go as you're developing the form. Now, the other thing I'm considering too. And this is kind of when we first started modeling form, and I was discussing whether or not working out of a dark shadow versus working from light to dark. The one tricky thing about working in the lights is that Given that we're sort of finishing things as we're going along, it can be very tricky because we don't have enough context to see really how far we need to take the lights. And one thing I always found that was difficult is when we're working in the light side of the cast and I would see these little half tone shapes or little smaller sub forms that were in the light and how I would regulate how much tone I need to actually put down in order for that to turn properly. So this filter area as we continue to work on, you'll find at least for me, It was a bit of a tricky area as I was drawing, and I'll talk a little bit about some of the things I'm going through as I think about this particular area. And again, we'll encounter this as well when we get more on the light side of the cast, where we're dealing with some more mid tone ranges around the node of the mouth and around the lower lip. 18. Simultaneous contrast continued: So as I begin filling in a little bit of this upper lip, again, you'll see this area where there's this pocket of light that's kind of creeping beyond the shadow here, and there's going to be a temptation to make it much lighter than it actually should be because again, this little portion of light is surrounded by the mass of all of this shadow around it. But when I start thinking objectively and I ask myself, well, what direction is this portion of the lip facing. So I know realistically that A, it's on the shadow side of the cast, so it's going to be relatively dark just by that fact. But it's also not necessarily facing upwards. So if I think about the relative tilt about where this piece of form is facing in relationship to the light, It realistically can't be that bright because of those two things I just mentioned. So this is something as I'm working closer towards the light side of the cast. I'm going to be asking myself the same series of questions. But in this particular instance, as we're discussing simultaneous contrast, this is something that you're going to have to wrestle with in your own drawing because it's going to come up sooner or later. So this is something that you're going to have to wrestle with in varying degrees depending on the portion of your drawing you're working on. Now, again, because we haven't really filled in the entire drawing, a lot of times we're not going to have, you know, exact context about where to go. So you want to be going back and forth, let's say, just quickly, you know, like flickering your eyes from one side of the drawing to the other and make those comparisons, ask yourself, well, okay, well, relative to the light side of the cast, you know, realistically how bright can this darker portion of the cast be? And so that's kind of something I'm always asking myself as I'm filling these areas in. The hard part is that my eye is going to tell me that, Oh, you know what? Maybe that's really dark, and it only appears that way because I don't have the rest of the cast filled in yet. So not until I see the entirety of the cast fully filled in, can maybe I make better decisions? And so what that means realistically is that there's going to be a portion of the cast that once I get everything filled in, I'm probably going to have to go back and make some adjustments that I couldn't really see as I was working. Now, obviously, the goal is to try and avoid as much of that as I can possibly do so that I'm trying to get things right the first time. But again, certainly that is something that comes with experience, practice and just doing a lot of drawing. So and I'll say that, you know, even after doing this for several years, it's something that I still have to go back in in the end and just make corrections. And I think that's just part of the drawing process. So my eye is far from perfect. So it is something that you always have to kind of contend with in the end. But the mindset and the goal is to try and make things right the first time. And that's why we really want to just always be working as you know, slow as we possibly can in the sense that we want to just be very careful as we're working and be very methodical so that we can prevent having to go back and make more adjustments or corrections in the end. So as I start to fill in this filtrm area, it is very tempting to want to make this much darker because again, we have these little pockets of light that are all kind of scattered within, you kind of see where the little scoops and some of these sort of linear passages of light through the film and there's a few little highlights that are popping up here and there. And so, because of all of these little bursts of light all concentrated in an area that is you know, kind of in a more middle value range, it's very tempting to Maybe go darker in this filrum area than is necessary. But again, if we think about You know, the way this filter, relatively speaking, if you were to check your own mouth, you know, and kind of if we think about the top down light source, the filtrm itself is actually facing at a slightly upward angle. And that's just kind of again, if we think about the volume of the mouth is being a rounded form, the filtrm and the upper lip are sort of that top part of that rounded volume. So that's something that I have to think about that saying, Okay, if the light is coming down from this area, then it can only be so dark. So that's something that I kind of have to keep in the back of my mind so that I don't go too far, but I also want to be mindful of the lights that are around it because if I go to light in sort of the value in the sort of pocket of tone here, then the lights aren't going to stand out either. So that is something else that I have to kind of keep in the back of my mind. And it's just becoming this sort of balancing act that you may have to, you know, in certain areas of your drawing, you're kind of just pushing and pulling in these sorts of areas where you ultimately may have to get to another portion of the drawing to make a better assessment, but that's something right now, I think, in this particular area, as I was doing the drawing is, you know, something I had to wrestle with. As I'm accounting for some of the light shapes in here, it's still a balancing act of trying to make sure that I'm not going too dark in that to shape that's right next to it and just being mindful of some of the curvature as that filter is scoping and kind of rounding around the lips as well. Now, in this particular area, I may have to go and sort of build in maybe some of the top lip so that I get a better sense of where this needs to go in the filterm area because, again, the values are very tight in the sense there's not a whole lot of range that I have to play with, but the next darkest thing that I can sort of use as a guide is going to be filling in the top portion of that upper lip and just kind of completing that, and that might give me some better context. 19. Upper lip: So to get a better idea about the filter, I'm going to go ahead and start filling in some of the upper lip. Now, that's going to give me a better context about where I need to go for the rest of the filter so that I'm not over darkening certain areas because my eyes are not very well. So as I kind of continue here, one thing to keep in mind is that Now, on the left hand side of that lower lip, we had that really dark portion. Again, so even though we see that little bit of pocket of light creeping amongst the shadows, it's still relatively dark given the area that it's occupying. But now, as it starts to roll over, we get to the middle portion of the lip that's going to gradually get a little bit lighter. And then as we start working towards the right hand side, it's going to get even lighter because it's now facing more of the light. And so what I'm thinking in the back of my mind, again, is that even though we have some of these sub forms of the lips themselves, I'm thinking about the mass of the mouth and how it is a rounded form. And on the left hand side that you see here, that's sort of in shadow. That's sort of the dark side of that sphere. And if we think about the sphere that's kind of rounding, it's kind of rounding towards the light. So as I kind of work towards the right hand side, I'm going to gradually start easing up and start thinking about how these forms are turning as it starts to get closer to the light source. So now, it's not a big shift overall. It's a fairly small difference, but It is there. And so that's something I have to keep in mind. So the lip is rolling you know, from that shadow side all the way to the light side. And then it's also rolling vertically in the sense that the upper lip is also facing the light, and then it's tucking down under as we get to the core shadow that's connected to the lower lip as well. Now, as I'm getting towards the end of the upper lip and getting closer to the node of the mouth itself, there's kind of a lot going on in terms of around the node of the mouth, there's a lot of middle value ranges that are going to be sort of, I think, deceptive and how dark I may have to go because this is also going to affect the area just above the upper lip because that's kind of the brightest portion of the cast itself. So there is going to be a temptation to sort of maybe darken or lighten certain things. But again, I want to just think about where things are turning in space. So as we get to the lower portion of the upper lip, it's going to be much darker as it's sort of tucking in and coming into contact with the lower lip. And then as we reach sort of the top corners that are closer to the filtrum, things are going to get a little bit lighter, and it's just going to be a back and forth balance. And so you'll find in your own drawing, there's going to be a lot of back and forth in certain areas where again, you get sort of a broad mixture of ranges that might be a little bit tricky to handle at first. And so I would encourage you to always, you know, just try and solve each area as best you can as you're working. But if you reach sort of a sticking point where it becomes a little difficult, sometimes it's beneficial to just work around the next area of the drawing so that it just gives you a little bit more context to work off and that hopefully allows you to solve, you know, any particular problems you might be having a little bit better. 20. Finishing upper lip: So now with the upper lip filled in, you can kind of see a little bit better assessment of what's going on, I think in the filtrm and then, you know, I'll probably still have to go back in and refine some areas a little bit. But you can see now from where we started. I kind of thought the area in the film was getting a little bit dark. But now that I have the upper lip in, it doesn't bother me so much. So having a little bit more context with the surrounding area is going to help me better assess where I need to go for that particular portion of the drawing. Now, we'll probably go ahead and start building the lower lip as well since it is really close by. And then I think with the rest of the mouth filled in, I should have a much better idea about where some of the other areas above it need to sort of sit in relationship to the lips themselves. Again, it's just kind of a tricky area, I think on the light side of this cast and probably the more complicated in terms of creating that sense of form, you know, because there's really not a lot going on in terms of I think there's not really a lot of sub form above the lip itself. It's really just this very even gradual turning of form, and to try and capture that light effect, it's very subtle. And so I think that's something that was a bit more of a tricky problem to try and solve as I was working in these areas. Now, there's still some relative refinement that I want to do through this area, and it's mostly just kind of taking harder pencil leads and just smoothing out some of the graphite so that there's not as much noise and the rolling effect is kind of a little bit more gradual and subtle. Now, depending on you know, more of personal preference, I think, that's kind of up to you. But for this particular drawing, that's something I wanted to try and, you know, get it a little bit on the smooer side because there's these really nice forms in the lips themselves that I wanted to just have a nice rolling effect as best I could kind of create that. So kind of making the graphite passages a little bit more even and smooth is going to help that. Now, as you begin the leg, the one thing I need to keep in mind is that I compared to the upper lip, the lower lip itself is actually more light facing because of the way it's angled. So realistically, it's going to have a overall lighter presence in the drawing. But I do need to factor in a couple of things because for example, here on the left hand side, we have this strong cast shadow on the lower lip, as well as the more dominant shadow side of the cast. So this particular area is still going to have a rolling effect just like the upper lip had. But It might start out with a overall lighter value because of how the lower lip is facing the light. Okay. Now, because the lower lip is a much more simple form than the upper lip, and there's not as much activity going on in terms of the anatomical nuance. The overall gradation that I'm going to kind of see across that form is going to be much more even. Now, as it gets towards the node of the mouth, there's a few pockets of light here and there, especially as we get to the corner where the lips are coming into contact with each other, but for the most part, this lower lip is going to be a much simpler piece of form to sort of resolve because it's a much more simple gradation. Now, there are some smaller little, you know, kind of sub forms that I see peeking out in the lip, but they don't really stand out too much. So it's not something I'm going to really try and play up or get in there because it's such a small component of the form that's happening that I'm not going to really, you know, kind of give that too much presence. This again, just kind of goes back to the ideas that we don't really want to overemphasize sub forms realistically because it's just going to kind of break the overall effect. Now, if it's something that, you know, let's say you personally value in the drawing, that's okay, and you can certainly put that in there if you kind of feel like it's necessary. But again, we don't want to lose the idea of the overall, larger form that we're trying to capture. And then once we have that effect going, then we can maybe perhaps go and revisit some of the smaller sub forms that we're seeing, but try not to emphasize that and just try and think about the big picture of the larger form. 21. Lower lip: So as I'm filling out the lower lip, the one thing again, you'll see is that it's going to be a much more even transition throughout the entirety of that piece of form. The other thing too to consider is that there's not a lot of sort of rolling vertically. And you can kind of see with the upper lip, there's a very distinctive sort of rolling effect from where the lips are kind of coming into contact, and then it's rolling towards the light. With the lower lip, it's actually much more even. There's not as much of an extreme that's happening in comparison with the upper lip. So the only thing I really have to consider is kind of more of the horizontal sort of rolling of that particular form because even from where the lower lip is meeting the shadow beneath it and kind of some of the sort of the shadow just above the chin area. It's not a severe turn. So even from sort of that form shadow where the lower lip is sort of coming into contact with that area, it's more or less fairly even. So I don't really have to factor in this sort of large turning effect, the same way that I did with the upper lip. So most of the values through this area are going to be fairly even for the most part, because we haven't reached the extremities of the light side just yet. We're still kind of in a predominantly shadow area for this particular portion. Now, again, the overall value of the lower lip is still going to be brighter than the upper lip because again, it is facing towards the light. Now, there is this kind of tiny portion. You can kind of see this linear kind of thing that's happening. It's almost like a little cut line. But it's very subtle in the lower lip. But it is prominent. Even when I kind of squint my eyes, I do see the separation there. So that's something I may want to just kind of put in and suggest. You can see it carry over more so on the light side because there's kind of an extreme and that's kind of just like a little portion that's cut out in the cast, and it's very subtle, but it's kind of a nice detail in a relatively simple area. So that's something that I kind of decided to put in. Now, one thing I did want to mention is that when you're working in an area where there's a sort of a larger expansive form, and there's not a lot going on like what's happening here. The tricky part is really more about keeping your graphite and your tone even over a large expansive area. So one thing I have a tendency to do when I come across these areas is I'll switch over to a harder lead, maybe a little bit sooner than I would normally. And I just find that using a harder lead in these kinds of areas, For me, it feels a little bit easier to connect different passages of tone without worrying about too many seams or too many dots in the graphite, because in these sort of larger areas where there's not a lot going on. There's not a lot of turning or anything like that. I find that it's sometimes a little bit tricky to keep things really clean and even. So using a harder lead and then maybe going back in and just taking your eraser and looking for any little imperfections, That kind of makes it, I think, a little bit easier to handle because when you have a large expansive area, and you know, there's no subforms. There's not a lot of turning happening. It's just a sort of an even expanse. It's really hard to actually kind of keep things clean and sort of organized so that it looks like a seamless piece of form, and it doesn't look like you kind of took all of this time to fill it in. So that's something to keep in mind. And I find that does happen later on in the cast. When I look around the area in the upper right hand side, that kind of piece of form that's facing the light is it's kind of coming around into the side. And then as we get to the chin area, there's these large expanses of form that really just have to be this sort of very even gradual turning, and there's not a lot of subforms to lock onto. So, again, for me, that really means kind of maybe switching up to some harder pencils, maybe a little bit sooner. And it just allows me at least for my hand, it allows me to kind of stay a little bit cleaner and keep the tone a bit more even from the beginning. 22. Lower lip continued: Now, as I get further along the lower lip here. This is where I have to be a little bit more careful with some of the range that I'm working in because as it's kind of coming into contact with the upper lip, there's kind of that brightness effect that I'm seeing. And as that lip is coming into contact, it's also tilting further up as it's facing the light. So there is a bit of a light change or an intensity of light that's happening in this area. Now, that's also exacerbated by, you know, the darker value that is in the upper lip. So that's something that I'm keeping in mind as well. But there is the sort of the turning effect is going to be a bit more prevalent in this portion of the lower lip, whereas the majority of it that I've drawn so far has remained relatively even. Now, as I get towards the end of the lip here, it's sort of the brightest portion. So I have to kind of be careful about how light I'm going to end up going. So I'm going to fill in some of this sort of shadow area below it just so I have a better context of how far I need to go in the light. Now, this portion through here is really more of like a dark set of half tones. It's really it's connected to the shadow itself, but it's really not a actual part of this overall shadow shape. It's just kind of you know, it's getting a little mixed up with some reflected light. So there's kind of this little shadow shape gets broken up in this area. Now, the one thing to keep in mind is at least I know that because the lower lip itself is facing upward, it's going to be very bright. We have this dark shadow shape that's below it. And so that is going to be facing down. So even though you know, it's starting to bleed out into the lights, this overall area through here is still going to be relatively dark because when I squint down and I look at the cast itself, it kind of blends together and makes an overall darker shape. So I'm still just kind of keeping that in the back of my mind as I'm sort of filling out some of this area. And so even as I'm drawing this area through here, it's relatively even overall. So there's a couple of little things that kind of, like, feather out, and you can kind of see where he's sculpted little small sub forms in the anatomy around this area. But it's still more or less an even transition as it's kind of coming out of the shadow. Now, as I kind of feel around it, and I start working on the chin and kind of the sort of the lower right hand side of the cast that is in light, I'll have some opportunities to maybe get into some of these subforms here. But for now, I really just want to focus on this particular area so that it gives me an idea about where I need to go with the rest of the lower lip. 23. Node of the mouth: So by having in that little bit of half tone below the lower lip, it just kind of gave me a little bit of an idea about where I can go with, you know, how bright is that lower lip as it's kind of coming into contact with the upper lip. It's not a sort of a big thing, but it's enough to just give me a better idea so that I can move forward with a little bit more confidence. Now, with that area filled in, it does give me, you know, kind of an idea about where I need to go as I kind of start building out some of the subform through that area, and then how all of that is going to connect with the surrounding portions of the node of the mouth and some of the anatomy that's occurring in that area. Now, as I begin working on the node of the mouth, there's a lot of, I think, simultaneous contrast in this area, very similar to what we experienced in the film above the upper lip. You can kind of see just below this area. There's that pocket of light right around the lower lip as well, and that's kind of where you see that sort of distinct separation of the lips themselves. Now, the other thing I have to consider is that there's a lot of mid tones that live in this area as we get kind of towards what would be the cheek and as it builds down into the lower part next to the chin. So there's kind of a good range of values that I have to sort of contend with in some of these smaller forms. And then knowing that it all has to sort of build up to the upper portion where the cast is the brightest. So the one tricky thing I'll say within this area is that you know, there's a lot because it's in the light side of the cast, there's a lot of areas that are relatively sort of smooth and even. So it's really more a matter of just trying to think about the subtlety of the forms in that area because some of them are getting actually cut off at the end of the cast. So it's trying to create that simple roundness through that small little area, even though I know it's kind of getting cut off at the end of the cast. I still want to try and use enough of the range that I have to work with so that I still get that illusion of roundness and turning in these areas. They're not necessarily severe turns. It's a very small subtle turning in some of these areas, especially as the node kind of comes in to the lip, and it kind of comes into that lower portion just below the lower lip. It's very subtle curvature. So I just need to really slow down and take my time and making sure that I'm trying to really get these small forms in there. Also, while maintaining a very even gradation through the tones I'm making. So as I'm building out of this area, I'm still keeping in mind that, you know, it is relatively even throughout, you know, the majority of this section, but there is some darker passages as you kind of get that feathering that's coming out of the node of the mouth and into that small portion of cheek that I'm seeing here. So it's not a lot, but it is a distinct sort of darker sort of tone in this area, and then it'll gradually rise up into lighter passages in the upper portion of the cast. And it'll kind of still it'll even out a little bit towards the bottom in kind of the lower part of the mouth and into the chin. But right around this little pocket here, there is some darker transitions. So I want to make sure I capture that because that's going to help me get that illusion of sort of a roundness through this area. Even though it ends at this very sort of abrupt line in the cast, there is that sense of volume and roundness that I'm seeing. So I want to make sure that I capture that 24. Starting the chin: With the note of the mouth more or less resolved, I want to start working downwards towards the bottom portion of the cast because it's going to be a lot of relatively even space. Now, again, through this area, there is some smaller subtle pieces of form that I have to sort out. And there's a small fluctuation through the chin and some of those other areas through there. But nonetheless, the relative degree of transitions through the lower portion for the most part are relatively even. So what I was mentioning earlier on when you get to these sort of large even passages is it's a little tricky at first to try and keep everything sort of nice and even while still describing form. And so this is where I'll start bringing out some of the harder leads to kind of work solely in the light section. For me, I just find that it's a lot easier to keep things cleaner if I'm using like an H. Well, I would say even an H or a two H, and in some instances, even a four H. So at least that's kind of my personal preference when I start dealing with the much lighter areas of the cast. The other thing I have to again, sort of factor in is that I'm going to be using my eraser a bit more in some of these passages because I'll see little dots or streaks or scenes as I'm connecting section to section. Now, that's something I entirely expect, so I'm sort of accommodating for that as I go along. And so that's something to consider, too, when you're doing your own drawing when you have these really large sort of expansive areas where there's not a lot of tonal transitions from one section to the next, and it's a large piece of even form where there's not a lot of sub forms going on. The other thing I usually like to equate that is think about a portrait and where you have, let's say, like, you know, the passage through a cheek or you would have the passage of light through a forehead, where it's just a very sort of even subtle transition of form, and there's not a lot of subforms to latch onto. So as I kind of start working in this lower portion of the cast, that's going to be a lot of what I'm dealing with. And so you can see, as I'm working along through here, it is really just a matter of gradually stitching these little passages of tone together, making sure that as I'm kind of connecting one piece to the next, if I see any sort of seam line or any sort of inconsistency in the graph I'm putting down, I'll go ahead and take my era and just gradually take out any sort of inconsistencies that come up. Okay. Now, as I start kind of getting towards the bottom, there are some subtle minor tonal shifts that I'm seeing through the chin. You can see that, especially in the middle. And because there is some sort of plane or change in the chin. We don't see the entirety of it, but there is sort of a front plane of the chin, as well as a more upward facing portion of the chin. And you can kind of see that in the light passage that's just below the shadow shape. So now, that's something I'm going to want to gradually work up to. And so for the time being, I'm going to sort of circle around that through this lower portion and gradually work up to that lighter passage. 25. The chin: Now, as I begin kind of getting towards this chin portion of the cast, I'm starting over at the darker side of the cast, as I feel again, for me, it's easier to work out of a darker passage and gradually work into a lighter passage versus if I were to start and continue on the right side of the chin where I was before, To me, it's a little bit trickier and the passages through that area are a bit more even overall in terms of form. So, I want to kind of go over to this darker side where I have a little bit more opportunity to connect where we originally began at the start of the drawing and start to connect that area and build into the rest of the chin. Now, as I'm kind of connecting these two portions of the cast, I can kind of see some areas where from when I originally started in this bottom portion that I might have to make some adjustments in terms of how I see some of the form turning in space, and I think that might sort of require me to maybe darken down some of these values a little bit more than what I originally made them. Now, because I'm trying to connect these two areas of form together, I can make these corrections in the moment. Now, For the rest of the cast, I might go ahead and just wait till I have everything filled in and then make those adjustments as I see necessary. But because I'm still dealing with a blank portion of the cast and I'm sort of tying it together to this other piece of form, I can make those adjustments right now and feel okay about them. Now, as I'm building this up and just making a comparison between the left and right hand side of the chin here, it kind of has the illusion that it's sort of this sort of smooth form that's just from one side to the other is there's not a whole lot going on. But if I really kind of stop and think about it, there are some very subtle plane changes that are taking place. If we think about the chin and if this was more of a planer type of sculpture and it wasn't as sort of you know, nice and even and smooth and you do kind of see there is a very subtle indication of a front portion of the chin that's facing us and then a more upward light facing portion as it's reaching towards the sort of the bottom lip there, you can kind of see where it gets a little bit lighter, and there's that light transition as it's rolling upward. Now, in order for me to kind of capture that, I need to kind of think a bit more structurally about the chin itself and start to see some of the planes and their subtlety. And now, I'm not going to necessarily draw these sort of, you know, sharp angular planes or anything like that, but I need to be mentally thinking about that in the back of my mind so that I can sort of sculpt the surface that I'm seeing with my pencil as best I can. Now, I don't want to overstate these planes by any means, because I don't see any harsh transitions, but I do need to be aware of kind of what's happening on the surface and where I'm seeing the little bit of light in the upper portion of the chin and what is the gradual roll off of light as it reaches more towards this front facing plane. Now, this is something depending on the cast that you're working on and the lighting situation. You always want to be asking yourself, you know, kind of what changes are taking place and what degree is the light rolling off from one plane to the other because this is going to give you an idea, About how either severe or subtle transitions you make as you start to rule a form from one portion to the next. As I continue to build this area up, I'm really just trying to keep everything nice and even keeping in the back of my mind that there's a lot of opportunities for these areas because they're so tight, the transitions are so even that I could potentially have a lot of seams as I kind of connect one area to the next. This will become more important as I start working into the light portion of the chin, given that the range is significantly more compressed and I don't have as much sort of value or wiggle room to play around with. So that's just something, you know, while I'm still trying to think about the planes and the surface of the form itself, I'm also trying to keep in the back of my mind to keep everything clean, keep all of the transitions very nice and even. If I have any excess seams or anything like that, I want to clean them up as I go along, so I don't have to go back and revisit these areas. 26. Continuing the chin: Now, as I'm getting towards the center portion of the chin, there's going to be some slight variations because now we're kind of creeping on into the light side of the chin itself. And then as we start to go up, you know, vertically in the chin itself, there's going to be a little bit of a plane change from this front facing portion as it slowly and gradually starts to turn upwards, and you're going to see a little bit of transition into some lighter passages. Now, this is going to be even more extreme as we get further right towards the brightest portion, which is just going to be just below that lower lip shadow that we've already established. But Again, as I kind of get through these areas, the more important thing for me at this point is going to be just to maintain the cleanliness of a lot of the transitions so that I don't end up with a lot of streaks or seams or little dots in the tone itself. Now, there is going to be a little bit of a slight variation in the center point of the chin. And you can kind of tell that if we were to think about if we saw the entirety of the head in the cast, there would be that little divot in the center point of the chin, and you can see it by some of the fluctuating form in that area. It's something that I'm keeping in mind because I do want to indicate it in there because it's very obvious to me. And so I want to make sure that I'm accounting for that subtle transition and subform. But I don't want it to stand out too much relative to the larger form of the overall chin. Continuing along in this area, the transitions through here are still going to be relatively even for the most part, even though there's going to be a little bit more of a drop off as I work towards the bottom center portion of the chin. Now, the one thing I have to be careful of is that, again, when you're dealing with these large areas where there's not a lot of sub forms, there's not a lot of very specific plane changes or I would say abrupt plane changes that are very obvious It can be very tricky to kind of keep all of these passages clean. Now, this is why I'm using still kind of a harder bit of lead is mostly two H, and in some instances, some four H to kind of make things nice and even. But that's something to keep in mind is if you're working on these broad passages and there's not a lot of turning that's taking place or any subforms that are sort of very obvious. And if there's kind of just a little bit more subtlety all across the board, I want to just make sure that I'm maintaining this neat and sort of even passage to this large area. And it really is more just a matter of Taking your time to build up these areas slowly. And again, maybe using some harder leads so that you don't have to really worry about a softer led like an HB or anything like that that can get muddy really quick, but those harder leads have a tendency, in my opinion, to stay a little bit cleaner as you kind of continue to work and build them up. Now, as I mentioned earlier, I kind of have that little tiny transition in the middle of the chin, where you see that kind of very small sub form that again, I do want to account for it. I just want to make sure that I'm not overstating it because it is very subtle. So I do want to make sure that it's in there because I feel that it's necessary and it's part of the character of the cast. But I just want to make sure that, you know, things aren't overstated, and it's not a very abrupt transition. It's kind of just a nice gradual subform that you kind of see transversing across, you know, sort of the entirety of that chin area. And then as it kind of reaches over into the light side of the chin itself, you know, you can kind of see just the passage from the left hand side that was very dark as we kind of built that up, and then it just kind of gradually transitions over to the light side. And it's a very even tonal passage through that entire form. Even though there are some very subtle plane changes, when you kind of look at it at a glance, it should read as like a nice even form. And so, again, depending on the kind of cast that you're working on, you may have some of these passages that even though they may sort of encompass a and large area. If there's not a lot of sub forms or any sort of abrupt turning of form, you want to make sure and try and maintain just that nice and even passage through those areas. And this might mean using some harder leads so that you don't accidentally go too dark. But also, too, that, you know, you just want to make sure that you're keeping everything nice and clean, watching out for seams or any little dots that might potentially break that nice even passage. 27. Finishing the chin: As this portion of the cast is almost fully filled in, you can kind of see now in this area. We're getting closer to that most light facing plane that I see in the chin. Now the thing that I'm keeping in mind is that it is a brighter portion, but it is relative. So in comparison to the upper portion of the cast, it's not nearly as bright because it is further away from the light source. But nonetheless, relative to what I'm seeing in the chin, it's probably the most bright area for this particular section. So what I'm keeping in mind as I'm working is that I know the front sort of facing plane of the chin has to be relatively darker as it's turning and facing towards us. And then as it kind of gradually rolls into the upper portion of that chin, it does need to get a little bit lighter. Now, the tricky part is as well, how much lighter and realistically because of the form that we're dealing with, and there's really no abrupt turns. It's a very gradual transition. So I just want to kind of creep up onto that lighter passage, and it needs to be very subtle, which is why again, I'm kind of using some of the harder leads for pencils and just slowly building up to it. Now, I find for me, it is, again, going back to what I've said previously is starting from a passage. And in this case, in the chin, it's more of a middle value range. It's not necessarily building out of a shadow, but it is a darker area, nonetheless that I want to build out of and just gradually roll that form slowly into that lighter passage. Now, with the majority of this filled in, I'll probably have to go back and revisit some little sections and just kind of look for little inconsistencies. A leftover seams I may have, or even little specks of graphite that are kind of breaking up that expansive form. And again, that's one thing, you know, as I mentioned before, when you're dealing with these large passages where there's not a lot of abrupt turning of form or the subforms that are in that area are very subtle. It's really hard to kind of keep those things clean and even. So You may decide at some point where you've worked on an area maybe too long or you kind of just get a little burnt out. And so you may want to move on to another section. And then once again, we have everything in the drawing filled in. We can revisit those areas, kind of clean them up a little bit and make sure that all of those transitions and, you know, maybe minute sub forms or what have you are all working together a little bit better. But as much as you may try and want to get it in the first past. Sometimes it is really hard to just nail it on the first time. So it is, you know, a very plausible thing where you may have to revisit some of these areas in the end just to kind of do some little finessing and touch ups. And this is actually where getting to those sort of final sort of build up of form, we're all actually pull out maybe like a four H pencil, and if it was, like, a really light section, I might even pull out something like a six H because I find that those harder leads just really allow you to smooth out an area. And I almost treat those kinds of lead as like a polishing lead. So we do the majority of the work with an H and a two H led and kind of I can more or less do everything with those pencils. But if I run a really sort of refine and finessin area without really adding too much extra graphite to the paper itself. But just kind of nudge things here and there. I do find for me personally that pulling out a four H or a six H in certain instances just really allows me to make very subtle changes without feeling like I'm adding a ton of extra information or layers to the graphite or anything like that. So that might be something to consider if you don't use those pencils currently or if you don't have any, it's worth having maybe one or two, of them just around for, like, little finishing things as you're working. Getting back to the upper right hand side of the cast, I'm going to begin from the node of the mouth and just gradually work that area as it slowly builds up to the brightest area towards the above the mouth. Now, there's still a decent amount of things I can kind of work on in this area because from that filterm we do get a little bit of a light passage that's connected to the upper lip. But we also have some of the rounded forms that are sort of sort of spreading out from the node of the mouth, and you can kind of see some of those rolling effects as it gets towards the edge of the cast there. Now, as it gets towards the top, it does sort of flatten out because of how the cast is cut. But there's some opportunity here for me to kind of play in the range in this area so that I can try and get this to look as rounded as I possibly can, even though it's a very sort of small confined area. 28. The node and upper cast: Okay. As we're getting to the point where the cast is completely filled in or getting close to being filled in. This particular area is going to be a little tricky from the standpoint that I don't have a lot of room in terms of a range to work in because it is the brighter portion of the cast. So the amount of range I have to play with is going to be relatively small. So in this particular instance, the more important area for me, as I'm building this up, is going to be the node of the mouth and the surrounding area because it's one of the last sort of areas of the cast where I'm going to have an opportunity to have a nice sense of form, and you can see that around the node and as it spans out across a little bit above the upper lip there. But as it gets to the top portion of the cast, it does get a little more flat, not only because of the form of the upper cast and how it's kind of connected, but also because of the range of light that I have to deal with. So as I get closer to this brighter area, it just limits my range and kind of gives me less opportunity to create a sense of form in that particular area. So you can see as it kind of keep going back over this node of the mouth and kind of staying in this particular area because, again, I really want to emphasize this particular portion because it's sort of the last area that I can emphasize some turning of form. And it becomes to me very obvious as that node is kind of tucking into the lips. Kind of connecting into the edge of the cast. There's a very distinct turning effect that's happening, and I want to exploit that as best I can because I feel like the more I can emphasize the turning that's happening on this area, it's going to be a lot easier for me to build up to the upper portion of the cast, and I feel like I'm going to have a little bit more flexibility in the ranges of compression that I have to create so that I can try and really get that bright effect that I'm after. Now, this doesn't mean I want to necessarily overstate anything, but I do want to take advantage of what I have left in this particular area as I kind of start working towards the top here. The other portion I can kind of take advantage of is that little sort of strip of light that's just above the upper lip there as it kind of is kind of creating a small subform. So that's another opportunity that I can use to my advantage to kind of gradually work towards the film as everything starts to get a bit brighter. Now, the rest of the upper portion of the cast is going to be fairly even, almost similar to the chin, but just in a brighter overall range. Now, realistically, there's not, you know, any sort of subforms or anything like that. It's kind of a nice gradual passage through there, and you only can really see the curvature in a few areas from this particular vantage point. If you were to view it from the side, you can kind of see the roundness and the depth of the mouth that's protruding from that front plane of the face. But from this particular vantage point, it's relatively even. Now, the other thing I'm going to consider is that again, there is kind of this transition area that is for the most part, fairly light, and as it kind of creeps over towards the filterm, it is going to get potentially brighter and brighter. And it's not reaching a sort of high point again in terms of a high light, but there is a few small little bright spots in there that I can kind of take advantage and just kind of gradually work towards. 29. Finishing stages: As I'm getting to the top portion of the cast here, I'm being really mindful again that we're getting close to the brightest passages in this particular cast. So the range that I'm working in is going to be very subtle. And while I'm keeping in mind that there are a few small highlights here and there, It's not this super bright passage, but it has to be bright relative to the surrounding area. So there are things before, like simultaneous contrast that I'm still keeping in mind because we have the darker passage of the upper lip that is really influencing the brightness that I'm seeing on this top portion. Now, again, there's not a whole lot in terms of form that I have to think about because it's relatively even through this area, and it's only really going to change around the upper lip and that small little passage, and then also the filtrum as it gets to the brightest point. The other thing I'm keeping in mind is as I'm putting down little passages of tone, I have to be very careful in terms of how and kind of how any of these marks might potentially get because now that this is a bright area, I'm pretty much forced to using some harder leads for me just because I want to be very careful and mindful of how I'm building it up. But any sort of little area that gets a little too dark too quickly or anything like that is going to jump out immediately. So when you're working in the brightest passages of your drawing, it's something to just be very mindful of, and you can kind of just put something down, check it against everything else in the area and just make sure that nothing is jumping out too abruptly. And that's sort of the one thing you can rely on in these lighter areas is that if something doesn't feel right, it's going to stand out because there really shouldn't be a whole lot of fluctuation in the passage and any sort of dark mark is really going to jump out at you. And so that's just a reminder that you'll have to go back in and maybe clean up some passages as you're working. As I built up the area, you'll kind of just see me going back in and filling in spaces and taking my eraser and just cleaning things up because again, this whole area needs to just be very even and subtle because just the turn effect that's happening is very sort of it's very even, right? And so the only time it's really jumping a little bit as it kind of gets close to the filtrm it's reaching a sort of a high point as the filtrm tucks in and then transitions to the other side. But for the most part, in the upper corner through here, all the way working towards the filterm it's very gradual and very even. So these total passages need to reflect that. Now, one thing I have a tendency to do in these lighter passages is that I find myself going back and forth where I'll add a little bit of information, check it, maybe remove something, and then go back, add some more, and it just becomes this back and forth process. And I feel the reason I do that is because I know that I have such a limited range to work in is that I have a tendency to slow down. Maybe observe a little bit more, ask myself questions about, you know, again, you know, what is most light facing? How is the light dropping off in this area? How is it getting brighter or darker or what have you? And I want to just become maybe a little bit more analytical because I really just want to make sure that things are looking the way they should, and I'm getting the proper turns and form that I'm looking for. Now, obviously, this is very much a case by case scenario, depending on the lighting, the drawing, et cetera. But in certain instances like this where I don't feel it's a super high contrast cast. It is dark. There are very obvious light and dark passages through here. But again, because we don't have this super dramatic highlight, certain areas are a little bit more even and they don't have that super high contrast that you might see, you know, in other drawings or other casts you may have seen. And that's just kind of what I'm working with. So I'm just keeping that in mind and really just trying to slow down as we're getting towards the end of the drawing. I still know that once everything is fully completed and filled in, I am going to go back in and reassess everything, make some adjustments, maybe add some information, take some away, look for areas where I could potentially smooth things out. If I feel like there's any particular area where there's a lot of grain that maybe is creating a sense of noise that I don't like, or maybe one of the light areas isn't as sort of smooth and even as I feel it could potentially be. Those are going to be the things I'm looking for as we start to wrap up. 30. Finishing checkpoint: Now that the drawing is all filled in, this is the time to really start to nitpick at what we've established and decide whether or not we need to refine certain areas more or if we need to clean up areas of the drawing or any sort of final details that we really just didn't quite get to. Now, as I mentioned in the videos, the hard part about sort of working section by section is that as we work, we don't have an entire context of the drawing because we're so laser focused on one area at a time. So once we get everything filled in, then anything we may have missed or things that we just kind of didn't catch at first, we can now hopefully better see what we've established now that we have the entire drawing filled in. So what this means for us now is that if there's anything that feels unresolved, or for example, the overall form effect isn't quite reading as, you know, round, or let's say your shadows are still too noisy and they don't have a nice, perfectly even tone on them, and it's creating this noise or you have little specs or dots in the lights of the form itself, and that's kind of breaking that turning effect. Any little imperfections like that. This is where we want to sort of slow down and just isolate any little thing that we can and try and refine the drawing. Now, this can mean a lot of things, you know, so this doesn't necessarily mean that we need to take things out or anything like that, but we're just looking for small refinements. Now, ultimately, this is kind of a personal opinion and to what degree, you know, a finished drawing means to you. But in the context of what I've done in the videos themselves, I was trying to get, like, a nicely refined, even sort of tonal passages through the drawing. And that's why you'll see me throughout the videos. I was kind of trying to take out many little imperfections of graphite, making sure that my shadows were nice and even, and that kind of involved me using some harder leads to go back in and refine areas. So, Again, once we get everything filled in, it's kind of up to you to decide where you want to spend that extra time to try and refine your drawing. And then from there, then it's kind of just, you know, when you decide the drawing is done. 31. Finishing: With everything filled in, I can really start to begin aother passive refinement. And like I mentioned at the very beginning, when we begin working and we start off with a single area and just gradually work from one section to the next, the hardest part about working this way is the lack of context for the entirety of the drawing. So now that I have everything filled in, I can start to reassess everything that I've done so far and start to ask myself some more questions, whether or not, you know, for example, there are certain areas where maybe there is a little bit too much noise or texture in the tone, and I can clean that up and refine that a little bit more. This could also include passages in the shadow that, you know, maybe when I first put them in, I thought they were okay. But now that I have the lights filled in, they might feel a little bit noisy and I can make another pass through them. And so what I would be doing at this point is just going through the entire drawing again and just kind of going back and forth, comparing one area to the next and see how they kind of work together. If there's any particular portion of the drawing that maybe feels a little bit disjointed to me, and it doesn't feel like it fits in with the rest of the drawing, and this could be a number of things. So every time you kind of do a drawing this way, you know, there's new problems kind of present itself. But what I'm looking for really is maybe areas that either don't transition well, or maybe I feel like the passages in form could be a little bit smoother. Maybe something feels like it's not quite tipping downward or tipping upward as much as it could be. So there's all these little variables that I want to start looking for, and you're just kind of scrutinizing the drawing. Now, this doesn't mean that we're going to be making radical changes or anything like that. It's really just small things that we want to be looking for, and we want to be asking like, what could we improve? Like, you know, what little things are kind of not working. And so this is going to vary from person to person. And again, the idea from the beginning is that we want to try and finish each section as we go along so that by the time we get to this point, we're not really having to do much, and that's sort of the end goal that you want to keep in mind. Now, obviously, that's sort of easier said than done, and realistically, there's probably going to be things that you're going to have to go back and make adjustments. And this, you know, I find happens for every drawing. But the goal is to try and mitigate that as much as we can by really working slow in each section as best we can and try and resolve it. One other thing to consider as you reach this stage of the drawing, you may have invested at this point, several hours, maybe even days or weeks into a given drawing. And I feel like at some point you do reach that kind of end where you really don't know you can't you're not quite sure where to go next. You don't know what to change or adjust. And that's totally okay because I feel like as you do more of these drawings, you kind of take away something new each time and you kind of reach another stage of development, and it kind of just prepares you for the next one. So I think that after a certain period of time, you know, you've gotten, you've done the best you can. Everything's filled in. There is a point where I feel like, you know, it is okay to stop and just say, like, you know, this is where I got in the drawing. And that's going to be different every single time. But I feel like the end goal of doing a drawing or an exercise like this is to really teach yourself the fundamentals and kind of just be patient with yourself and giving yourself the gift of time to really develop these ideas about how to bring up a drawing from beginning to end. A Now, I could easily spend another several hours just nitpicking every little square inch of this drawing and just trying to refine it to whatever degree, you know, I saw fit. But again, I think at some point, it no longer becomes a benefit of doing that. It does kind of just become, you know, spending extra time, just nitpicking little things. And, you know, sometimes that could be to your own detriment. So that's something to keep in mind as well. Ultimately, my goal for you would be to again, think about the concept and procedures that we went through as we kind of built this drawing up. And You know, for most of us, the goal is really not to be able to draw these casts per se. It's really to take those ideas that we applied in this drawing and go and make art, right? Ultimately, that is the goal to, you know, whether it's a portrait or a figure, still life, et cetera. You know, the end goal is to go and create and make something that you feel good about making or something that inspires you. And these are just kind of tools that we need to learn, especially if we're coming from a beginning standpoint where we maybe don't have a whole lot of drawing experience. This just allows us to sort of encapsulate all of those ideas in a very simple object that is a little bit easier to draw and break down, and then we can kind of take those ideas and use them to whatever means we want. Now, for those that are interested, if you were in a traditional kind of art school or tee style art school, this kind of would be your first year of study doing these kinds of cast drawings, linear block ins. And I would say if you kind of like this approach to drawing, it's probably a good idea to maybe do a handful of these cast drawings as just a good sort of practice foundation to sort of gather these skills if you really haven't done this sort of approach to drawing just yet. A lot of people may already have a bit of drawing experience, but perhaps maybe they haven't approached drawing in this sort of methodical manner before, and they kind of just maybe free handed a lot. And so, I find that going back to these sort of fundamental components of starting off with that linear block in and working in a very step by step procedure really just allows you to develop a way of working so that every stage has its own purpose and you never feel lost because you kind of know where to go next. And I feel that the more you can put things in a very procedural manner. It just allows you to work a little bit easier. It removes some of the guesswork and then you can really focus on each stage at a given time. And so my recommendation would be for, you know, those who are interested in this kind of working is do, you know, maybe two or three of these kinds of drawings, and I think that it gives you a nice set of foundational skills if you follow this procedure. From there, you can kind of decide if you want to do something a little bit more advanced or you start moving on to things like portraits or figures or anything like that that are maybe a little bit more involved and have a lot more things to manage in terms of, like, features and anatomy. And you know, there's more aspects of, you know, knowledge that come into play when you start tackling more difficult subject matter. But as a means of starting out, this is probably my favorite way to teach people how to draw because it just gives us something that is inanimate. We don't have to worry about it moving or blinking or anything like that. It's a single light source. So it kind of works in our favor, and we can spend as much time as we want on it, and we don't have to really worry about too much. So I hope you were able to follow along with each stage of the drawing and that everything was sort of clearly explained and made sense. I know it is a lot to sort of manage, especially if you're new to this whole kind of procedure. But I'm hoping that by working in sort of separate stages that you can just gradually build up the confidence to take on each aspect of the drawing. Once you start to isolate everything to its own individual stage, it's a lot more manageable and you don't feel like you have to juggle everything at once.