Back To Basics: Using Value To Render Light and Shadow in Pencil Drawings

1. Introduction: Hi everybody and welcome to back to basics. We will be your teacher is for this video course and we are so excited that you signed up to join us. My name is Melissa foreman. I am an artist, art director, painter, lover of all things creative. I'm Paul Richmond. I live in California now, but Melissa and I went to art school together awhile ago. We have been collaborating on a whole bunch of different projects all through the years. I'm also a painter, illustrator. I love doing very expressive painting myself, a lot of times with the palette knife. And I'll also really like telling stories with my artwork, as does Melissa. So we are going to be taking you through a variety of different exercises in these classes that will help you learn the art fundamentals. These are things that we practiced and studied ourselves when we were in art school. And it's always good to go back to the basics, right? So I think it's important to know the foundations before you can learn to break the rules. That's what I'll artists like to do eventually, right? But I think it's important to know the rules before you can break them. Learn the foundations, the basics. Even if you already learned them, I think it's important to go back every once in awhile and just explore that. Feel comfortable creating things maybe that you haven't done it in awhile or learning the, like we said, the basics today is all about learning to render with value. What does that mean? Hopefully, hopefully we know, hopefully we know, hopefully we can impart some kind of knowledge on this. But value is basically studying light and how it, how it reflects how it forms itself around different objects. We're going to start today by capturing things in black and white because it's the easiest way to get to value and kind of understanding why something might be lighter in some areas and darker and other, other areas. And adding depth through the study of that value or through the study of the way light effects something. Yeah, I'm excited to get started. Let's do it. Let's do folly. 2. Lesson 1: Examples From Art History: So we thought we'd start out by looking at a couple of examples of famous art pieces that really use strong value contrast and a good understanding of the light source so that you can start, you can see it first and then you'll get a chance shortly to practice doing it yourself. So our first one here is this still life with fruit by Caravaggio. And what do you, what do you see light wise in the smallest? Well, I think caravaggio has always been known for what is called chiaroscuro. And that is the study of light and how it affects something. It really means contrast and Italian. And I think he is someone that was a master at showing contrast and depth through the way he used light. So you can really see the dark, dark shadows in this and those light highlights. And there's a strong contrast between the two. There's a heavy light source. You can see it's definitely coming from the left there and it's casting strong shadows to the right. And all of these examples that you'll see are in color. Well, we only doing black and white today. But the foundation of all of these pieces is that there's a strong value component. As you can see, those really dark darks and they're really light lights. And that's what makes it a good painting, really the color is just add it on top. I always tell my students that if you can get a strong sense of value in your work, then you can really do whatever you out with color. And it will still hold up, the image will still feel believable. So if you want to exaggerate the color, use more imaginative color. If you have strong value, then as the foundation of the peace, then it'll still, it will still hold up and makes sense. Like Melissa was saying, you can look at this and tell where the light is coming from based on where the shadows are falling and where the highlights are. And that's always a good thing to ask yourself when you're beginning a new piece. Especially if you're doing something realistic, if you're looking at a reference, try to identify where the light is coming from because then you can capture that. You can bring that out in your art work. Alright, now here's another super famous one, the girl with the pearl earring. I need an earring like that. As far as actually, let's ask you, Oliver, participants in this class, when you look at this piece, where do you think the light is coming from? We'll give you a minute. All right. Melissa, study a close. It's not a trick question. Yeah. It's pretty it's pretty easy to tell. It is obviously coming from the left. And how did they how did they know that laws for? Well, I think, you know, this seems like a pretty basic question, but I mean, if it's, if it's the title of our class, right back to basics. I think obviously it's coming from the left because the light is on the left side of her. You look at the right side of her, That's shadow. So where the darkest darks are, that's obviously where the light is not hitting her. But the way you capture that an artwork is really what's going to add depth to your subject. So if we just painted this all in brightest brights, if everything was the same value as what you see on the left side of her or what we're seeing is the left side of her. I guess it would be her right side. But that would make the painting very flat if it was all as bright as what you see on the left side, if the painter had not had it added any shadows, you really wouldn't be able to tell how she exists in the real-world. Everything would feel flattening out. Not normal, not natural. The way we see things every day is either enlight are there and shadow are there in mid tone, which is kind of the two to put together somewhere in the middle. Yeah, yeah. I think also it's kinda cool in this one you can see you have the overall lightness on the left side of her body. But then there's also some subtle little touches that helped to reinforce that. So the where the highlight is on the earring, where the little highlight is in her eye, even on her lower lip, the way that the light is catching there. So there's a lot of subtle details that help to reinforce that, that story of how the light is falling on her when you really start paying attention to things like that, then you can bring out so many details in your work that will help to make it more believable. And here's one more, The Gleaners by omega a. And this one, maybe the lighting is not quite as obvious. It's not as dramatic as the first two because they're out outdoors. But take a minute and look at that and see if you can figure out where the light is coming from. So first thing you want to look for is where your lightest lights find those and decide what side of the subject those are on. So if you look at the left side of all of these people, What we're seeing is the left side of the painting. You're going to see the lighter lights and you're going to see more shadow on the right. So the light is probably coming from the left. The sun might be a little bit lower. So that's something that you'll just notice when something's outside is when the sun is a little bit lower at CAS, longer shadows, when it's a little bit higher, the shadows will not be as long. And so you can kinda tell what time of day it is. It's probably later in the day or early in the morning. Based on the way the shadows are in this, but it definitely adds depth that it adds a believable environment to what you're looking at. You know, what's outside. The sun makes sense the way it's hitting all the people and the way it's hitting the ground. So I think thinking about all of these things and how your light source affects everything that you're painting, creates a believable painting or a believable drawing. I think this one is a really good example too, of the way that they used the lighting to create depth the scene. Because not only do you have the light side and dark side on the figures, but if you look at the ground, how dark it is in the front or in the foreground, and how everything in the distance is much lighter. And that makes all of those background elements recede back into space. So you can use light and shadow and value to create a lot of depth in your artwork also, and usually, putting the most contrast on the elements that are the closest to us is a good way to do that because we see things clearer when they're close to us and things that are farther away sometimes become a little more ambiguous like what, like what is happening here in this painting? Yeah, we might not realize it, realize it right away, but this artist has manipulated the way we look at the painting and has created an environment where we focus on the women in the front of the painting before we look at anything else. And he did that on purpose because that's what his foreground, that's the subject, that's what he wants us to look at. We don't look at the background and until we've studied the foreground. And that's the way he wanted us to look at it. You have a lot of value. It's just the sheer power of art. You can manipulate people, make them look wherever you want. Your superpower. It really is though, and I think once you learn how to work with value, it will open up so many possibilities for how you can engage people with what you're creating. Alright, Is it time to make stuff now? I think it's time. Alright, let's do it. 3. Lesson 2: Value Scale: Alright, so for our first exercise today we are going to be making a value scale. What's the value scale? Well, I will tell you a value scale is just something you will use to determine which values you want to use within your drawing. So a value scale usually goes from lightest values, which would be going over very lightly with your pencil. So it will be very light. And then it would go from light to a little bit darker, a little bit darker and a little bit darker until you get to the darkest value within your drawing, which will probably be your shadow areas. All you need is a pencil, some paper. So let's do it. Draw five squares in a row on your page. They do not need to be perfect, and they don't need to be super gigantic. The bigger they are, the longer this will take. I don't know poem already panicking because I'm worried about my square. It's not being perfect. Oh bolus, I know you are. And I'm glad that you said that because I know there are other people out there who are probably feeling similar way. That I am not the only one. I don't feel alone now. Thank you. Oh, my best advice is to just get over it. Yes, I do hear that quite often. Is that a good therapeutic suggestion? It's not the most helpful, but I appreciate you telling me over and over and over my pleasure Anytime. All right. So now once you have your boxes drawn, we are going to start on the far right side. This will be our darkest value. So take your pencil and fill in that box is as dark as you can. And the way that you do that is just by pressing really hard with the pencil lead. You can vary the values in your drawing just by pressing harder or gently when you're, when you're shading. So take a minute and fill in that box, make it as dark as possible. You can also go over and over and over it with layers and that will make it darker and darker as you go over top of it. Yeah. Your first layer impatient like me, you just press really hard the first time and be done with it. That is also an option. I will not be doing that. No. No. But they can't see you. I'm in charge now, Melissa, you just have to deal with I know you are sick with power, Paul. I can feel it. I just wanted to tell everybody do not do what Melissa says. Of course you do. Of course, you'll be leading the next one. So my time will come. You just wait. It will. All right. So I'm just about finished with this box. How are you doing with your ears, Melissa, you almost done. I am doing okay. I am getting there. I am slowly the value to be dark enough. And depending on what pencil you have, you might have a harder time making it darker. If you have a drawing pencil and it is, has an h in it, it's a little bit harder, so it might be more difficult to make it dark. If you have a B pencil, it might be a little bit easier because the lead is a little bit softer. So just depending on what you have, if you have a normal number two pencil, they'll just take some work to get there. And that's a good thing to know because the different, different types of pencil loads, you can really use that to your advantage in your drawings. If you understand all of that, we'll be doing, we'll be covering that a little bit more in-depth in one of our future classes. That's all about how to use the tools. But for now, like Melissa said, just know that if it has a B, then that's going to be a darker pencil. And if you're trying to create a dark value, that's a really good one. So I used a to B pencil for mine. You can see that here, but the higher the number, the more extreme. So if you have like here's a six B, so that would be even darker. And same with the H pencils. The higher the number, the harder the lead. So it'll be, it'll make it even lighter and lighter marks. If you have something like an HB that's right in the middle or sometimes an F that's right in the middle as well. Alright, we're going to move on because I'm getting bored. Melissa, you're gonna have to catch up here. I'm trying I'm trying. Gotta keep her, gotta keep her going. We're going to go right to the box that is just to the left of this one and shaded in, but make it a little bit lighter. You want to make sure that you can see a difference between each of the boxes in your value scale. That really is the point. It's kinda like when you play the scale on the piano, each note is a little different. And that's really what we're doing here too. You can even think of values as being low. Low key or high key. Low is darker, high is fleeting. So I'm using the same pencil, just not pressing quite as hard. And I guess I'm kinda doing the Melissa thing of going back over it a little bit to push it a little bit more. That can also be a way to smooth out your shading. Not that it really matters in this example, but when you are doing something more realistic, if you want a soft shade, then if you go over top of the pencil strokes a few times in different directions, then that can really camouflaged those lines and make it more smooth. Okay. Okay. Polished with my second box. How are you feeling good? Yeah. Now, make sure you can see a difference between both of those boxes. Another trick you can do is to actually squint your eyes. And that helps you to just focus on the big picture. You don't see all the little variations in the pencil. You just see the overall value. Alright? If you need to make any adjustments, you can always use a kneaded eraser and go in and just kinda lift up a little bit of the value. If you got too dark. The kneaded eraser is great because you can just squish it around like this when it gets dirty. And then it's clean again. It's like magic. It's like silly putty erasers. It's also a nice little stress ball that you can play with on the side, Melissa, you need that right now. I really do pretty much all the time in my life, but especially when she's hanging out with me, it seems exhausting. I have to get ready for a new energy level. Alright, so now we're gonna go to this middle box. And you guys did. We're going to make it even lighter than the one we just did. I hadn't fill that one in. And it really is okay. If you get out of the lines a little Oh, Paulie, I don't know. I don't know if I can handle that. Melissa, who's in charge here, make it I think I should make it a requirement that you have to go outside of the lines a little with moles. I can't help it. I am I'm doing that right now. Oh my goodness. You call yourself a teacher. We are we are rebels. Got to learn the rules, to break the rules, right? Yeah. That's what they say. I think I said that. I'm regretting it. That's what Melissa says. All right. I have my three boxes. I think I am going to take my eraser and just lighten that link just a little. You can always go back to your other one darker too, if you feel like this one shows not enough of a difference or maybe the other one feels too dark. You can always adjust as you go. It's actually a really great example of how value is very relative to what is around it. If you compare this middle box to the white paper, it looks kind of dark. But then if you compare it to your darkest box, it looks pretty light. So when you are working on your drawings and paintings, you don't always have the full range of value in every area you might only have from dark to middle. But that middle value will look like because it's next to something darker. So this gives you, when you create a value scale like this, you can use it as a tool when you're doing a drawing, you can try to identify what values are actually being used in the reference and try to match them that way. All right, we ready to move on already? So this very last box on the left, we are going to leave that the white of the paper. Because if you are working on a white piece of paper and you want the lightest possible value. You can't get any lighter than that. So actually we get to just leave that one alone. I love that. I like it. Good lazy solution. So we only have one more box to go, and that's this one right here. So just very, very lightly, fill that one in. You want to create a very high key value c on using our vocabulary words. You are just teacher of the year now. And fill that one then makes sure that you can distinguish it from the one next to it. You're trying to hit something in-between the two boxes. So in-between the lightest one or the white of the paper and that mid value that you've just created. Exactly. And I think we got it. Now, there are more than five values in the world. Obviously. We chose five for this because it's a nice manageable number. We don't want to spend the whole 2 h making the value scale. But it would be a good challenge for yourself some time to see how many more boxes you could create and still distinguish them from each other. The more values that you incorporate into a piece, the more realistic it's going to look. So this is a really good way to just learn how to get your pencil to create all of those different shades. Yeah, it's good practice before you start drawing and now I grade and move on. I think we're ready. Yeah. Okay. 4. Lesson 3: Sphere: All right, great job with that. Now you have a value scale. You know how to create different values on the page. So for the next exercise, we want to give you a chance to actually use those values to create something. So what are they going to be making? Well, we're going to start pretty simple, so we're going to use those values to determine how they would wrap around as fear or an object. So we're going to use a ball basically to just show you how different light would hit that in different areas. So we're gonna do a highlight area. We're going to do a mid tone, and we're going to do a shadow. I'm going to show you how to do that. So just follow me. Alright, I'm following volley, let's do it. So I have my little value scale here, and this is just what we made in our first activity. So Paul walked us through this. So this is just a good thing to have and refer back to as we're working through this exercise. So I'm just going to put that next to my little drawing tablet here. The first thing we're gonna do is we're going to grab a pencil. And we're gonna make a circle in the middle of your paper. And you probably want to make a pretty big circle. So I'm just going to sketch that out. It doesn't have to be perfect. And yes, Paul, I am saying it doesn't have to be perfect. Who even Ru I don't even know right now, I've lost my identity. You've done this. I mean, I expected you to be like running around your room, looking for something around that you could trace. I actually did almost grab something, so like me and they have to have a perfect circle, grab like a roll of masking tape or something and just trace it. And there you go, you have a perfect circle. I'm just going to sketch one out here. Living on the edge, I login, I know. Look at me. Alright, so I have my circle. You can make it as dark as you want. So I'm, I'm just, I'm just using kind of a harder pencil. I have an H right now. Okay. So hemispherical. Paul, you have your circle. I do. Okay. So the first thing we're going to think about is where is the light hitting this circle? So we're going to think about this as a sphere. So it's a three-dimensional object. And if we're thinking about how the light was hitting that object, will decide where the light's coming from. So let's just draw an arrow in the upper left-hand corner here. And so that's gonna be our light source. So we're imagining this is a lamp and our light is hitting this direction. And so the lightest area is obviously going to be in the upper left here. So we're just gonna kinda make a little impression here as to where that small amount of highlight will be. It'll be in the upper left-hand corner there. Then basically with the sphere, what you're going to have is you're going to have probably the left hand upper side in the light and the right hand bottom side in the darkness because that's the way the light's hitting. So we're just gonna kinda make it indication as to where that light is hitting. And because this is a three-dimensional object, the light's going to hit it in a slightly circular way. So someone's going to make like a crescent moon shape in the bottom right-hand, their right hand side. And then we're gonna think about the shadow. The shadow is obviously going to be in a similar shape to that sphere. So this shadow is probably gonna be a circular shape. So we're going to think about where that might be hitting. And because our light is coming from the upper left, we're going to get a shadow in that bottom right. And we're gonna get a circular shadow starting in the bottom. And moving more to the right-hand side of our paper, we're going to sketch a circular shape that's going to act as our shadow. Okay? What if our sphere is a disco ball and it's not, it's hanging from the ceiling. Oh my goodness. That is a whole different online course and Pole be teaching in the future. Disco balls sign up if you're interested. I tried guys, sorry, I couldn't get it. So now I'm going to pull my values go on. I'm going to think about how all of these different values would be landing on my sphere. So if you think about the darkest area, which I know we did first and our value scale. That's going to be on the far right-hand side of your ball. I'm going to start with the same pencil that I used for the darkest area, my value scale. I'm going to start making a darker area on the far right hand side. Just start sketching in here. You can press a little bit harder like Paul said, in order to get that darker value, you can just layer the value as you go to make it a little bit darker. Just start adding in that edge that wouldn't be affected by the light. Trying to get it as dark as you can. I'm not going to take it all the way up to the crescent moon shape that I created. But I am going to do maybe the second darkest value up to that little line that I drew for myself. So think about adding in those two values for now. Adding more as you go. And depending on how big you draw your circle, it's going to take you a little bit longer. If your, if your circle is larger, just work up to it slowly. Are you doing over there, Polly? I'm working hard mole It's a tough trying to make it so the, the one value blends into the other one instead of having like a, you know, an edge between the different values but just kinda gradually loading the value feed. Yeah, that's one thing to think about too, is just kinda gradually letting the values get darker on the right-hand side and later on the left-hand side. Since it is a sphere, all of those values would be very gradually changing and shifting as the light moves across the object. So where are we made squares and the value scale. And they were clearly defined between one value, any other value. They won't be as clearly defined here. They would blend gradually into each other. You want it to gradually go from your darkest dark on, right, to your second darkest value towards the center of that sphere. Okay? One thing to think about, this is something that affects most object is, is they're all usually be some reflected light. And the reflected light is usually in the shadow area. And it usually comes from some kind of atmospheric light or some other object around the object that you're drawing. And usually on a sphere, the reflected light will be in the shadow area more towards the bottom. And the reflected light is usually just a little bit lighter than your darkest value. Getting very fancy. Getting very fancy. Yes. And you'll notice this a lot of things. It doesn't have to be something that's shiny or something that's known to be reflective. It can be almost anything in there. There might be some slight reflected light. And if you really notice, if you really pay attention to it. Okay, now that we have the darkest values, we want to move slightly lighter. So more on that mid range, that mid value. We're just working towards that highlight area that we drew in the beginning. Just gradually getting lighter. Always thinking about the shape of the objects and how the light would wrap around that object. So it'll be a slightly circular shift in value across the sphere. I could've made my sphere about half the size and still gotten the point across what I was thinking. I am also the size of my sphere, so but hey buddy, feel like, Oh, I made my sphere way too big. You can always go smaller. And it's a good exercise open do it. Just suck it up and do it. Yes. And it's also a good exercise in how and how to blend. But that takes a little bit to get used to if you haven't done much of it before. Hi, I'm kinda like turning my pencil a little bit to the side so that it's less of the tip, but a little more of the edge of the word makes it less like scratchy. And again, this is something you can definitely adjust as you go if you want to put all of your values in there and then go back and kind of shift things so it looks a little bit better. So you get a more of a blend and you get more of those values in there, you can always do that. So the nice thing with graphite is you can just keep adding to it until you get, get it to look the way you want it to. You can also use the kneaded eraser trick if you feel like it's getting a little bit too dark and areas you can go back and lift some of that value out. We're just going for a gradual shift. Darkest area to relate us. I think I'm getting close here. Sometimes I will do strokes in the direction that my object is going. So I know that since it's a sphere, it will tend to do strokes kind of headed in the same direction as the edge of the sphere. So it feels like it has kind of a circular shape to it. Sometimes that will help adopt. That mother says she's always thinking oh, it's thinking. Bryan never stops even when I wanted to. All right. So once your sphere starts feeling like a sphere, like it has a little bit depth to it. Like you can tell where the light is coming from and where the shadow is. You want to move on to that shadow shape. And the shadow shape is going to be the darkest value. So it's going to be similar to the edge that you created on this sphere on the far right hand side. Definitely right under the ball is gonna be the darkest point. It might get a little bit lighter towards the far right hand side. You could move to maybe that second darkest value as you get towards the end of the shadow, but it's very dark right underneath the ball. Start adding some shading there. Let's not a disco ball, but it is looking very cute. Yeah. Well, it's hard to compare it to a disco ball, but ******* queue. Hopefully everyone's feeling good about their sphere with value scale fleets, it feels like it has some depth. It feels like it has a shape to it. If not, just keep working on it, keep adding. Now you to work on your darkest darks. Sometimes that will really help it, pop it out. And then make sure you're keeping that highlight. You should have what feels like a ball. I do. You did it. Excellent. Excellent job instructing us on that. Well, thank you, Laura. You are a pro. Thank you very much. Of course. I gotta I gotta go back. And so my finger marks out of here. I always tend to drive my hand across everything that's done in graphite. You can always play. Does she has to make it perfect? I can't help myself. You know that you know this about me. Now everyone knows that about me. Yes. Given away all my secrets, Paul. I think you gave them away. Alright, well, that's our sphere. 5. Lesson 4: Still Life: Awesome, Great job. Now you understand value and you know how to use it to create a three-dimensional object. So let's take all of this and really put it to practice now by making a more detailed drawing of a still life. What do you think, Melissa? I ready, Paul, Let's do it. All right. Here is our still life that we are going to be drawing today. I've tried to pick something that is relatively simple, so we'll be able to get it sketched out pretty quickly and then get started focusing on the values. So if you haven't done a lot of drawing before, one of the tricks that I always suggest is to just look for simple shapes, shapes, and line. That's really all it is. So don't get too caught up in the details at first. I'm going to start by drawing the horizontal line for the back of the table because that will kinda just helped me to get everything placed where I want it to be on the page. So you can see that that line is a little bit below the halfway point. Your paper isn't exactly proportional to the reference. That's okay. You can have extra space in the background. You can position it however you want to on the page. Just make sure you have enough room for all of the elements. Okay? Alright, there's way backup the table. Now I'm going to start with the picture. And the bottom of the picture is kind of a circular shape, a little bit squashed, not a perfect circle. I'm going to start by drawing that. I like to just sketch very light and loose at first and I don't press very hard. Because if you press hard when you're sketching, then you end up making grooves in the paper. And if you have a line someplace where you don't want it, then you might regret that. So if you keep it light and sketchy, you can easily adjust things. Yeah, and it's okay to draw a lot of lines when you're sketching and kind of keep trying until you get one that you like. And then you can always go back, erase, and refine things as you go. I particularly like that approach because if you draw a lot of lines, there's a good chance that one of them will be right. Give yourself a lot of options to choose from. Another thing that I will do sometimes when I'm drawing something that is symmetrical like this. If you, if you don't look at the handle and just look at the picture itself. Drawing a vertical line up the middle will just help you to make sure that you're creating something that is the same on both sides of that. So now I'm going to draw the vertical part of the picture coming up off of that circle. And then there's a little ellipse at the top, like this. That was a fancy word there. Poly ellipse, I am being so fancy. In the ellipse. The ellipse has a little triangular part that sticks off the end on the right so that you can pour stuff out of the picture is always helpful. Yes, pouring with a picture is usually helpful. People learned so much in these classes don't really, we really have it all here. We are a fountain of knowledge poly, just pouring out of us constantly. We should, we should charge extra for all of these handy life that we owe it to life lessons. Right here. Sometimes when I'm drawing something like this and there are some really heavy shadows, I like to very lightly go ahead and sketch in the shapes of the shadows. Because that can actually help you to kind of construct whatever it is you're drawing. I'm going to just very lightly kinda outline where I see the shadow on that picture. Comes down. Here. It comes over. And now let's draw the handle. Ready? This is a good chance to look at the drawing. What I call, not just what I call what everybody calls the negative space. So if you look at the space between the handle on the picture and draw that as a shape. That little black area right here. If you, if you look at that as a shape instead of trying to draw the handle, it actually makes it easier. I like making things easy. Yes, that is the goal. All right. Here's the other side of that handle. How's yours coming, Melissa? It's getting there. I like all of the interesting shapes in this photo. It makes it very nice to draw. Nice composition. We couldn't figure out when we were looking at this earlier exactly what kind of fruit that is, Melissa said maybe nectarine. That wasn't my best guess. We'll just go with that. Kind of looks like a peach, but it's not fuzzy. That's where we landed. It can be it can be whatever you want it to be. A fruit. Any fruit. Okay. So I have got my picture on there. Now I'm ready to move over into the mysterious fruit bowl. Mystery free. My favorite. How is everybody at home doing so far? You getting it? If at any point we are going too fast for you, just pause the video until you catch up. No, no worries. We'll be here. All right, Now I'm going to draw another ellipse, my new favorite word of the day. And that is going to be it for the top, where we're kinda like looking down inside of the bowl. I'm going to start it on the right side so I can line it up with where I see it overlapping the picture. Whenever you're drawing more than one element in a drawing, you always want to think about how do they relate to each other. And if there's any points where they overlap, That's just a nice, easy way to find that. Draw the ellipse all the way over as part as far as I think it needs to go. It looks good to me. Then swing it around. I think one thing that can always help to was looking at that, that horizon line, we call it. So the line of the table that you created from the beginning and decide how close is this object to the horizon line. Is it further up as it further down? And that kinda let you figure out where everything fits together. It's like a big puzzle. Yeah. When you're drawing, it's easy to get consumed by just looking at one particular part that you're drawing at that moment. But if you can keep reminding yourself to kinda pull back, look at the big picture, look at how that part relates to something else in the composition than it really does help you to get things where they're supposed to be. Keeping it loose and sketchy at first is really helpful because then you don't get super tight and detailed too quickly and end up putting something in the wrong spot and have to erase it. Low commitment level if you if you start off sketchy like this, now I'm looking, I'm drawing the bottom part of this bowl right now. And you can see I did another vertical line here so I can make it symmetrical. I'm looking at how the bottom of the bowl compares to where the bottom of the picture is. I'm going to draw the bottom, the very bottom part of the bowl. Now the little stand kind of angles in like this to go up to the base of the bowl. And now I can erase my vertical line. And also all erased the part of the picture that's showing up inside the bowl because we don't need that. I'm going to just lightly sketch in some of the shadow shapes on the bowl. Now we'll just act like a map for you later as you start shading. So as you start rendering and adding some of those values, you will remember, okay, this is where some of my darkest darks go where I sketched in these shadow lines. Exactly. Okay. Making the little rim at the top of the bowl now. And then we'll draw the fruits are mystery fruit. I'm just going to call the neck drains. Okay. We'll go with it. That's what that's what Melissa said they are in Lewis is always right. I am a fruit scientist and expert. Let's see. I think I'm more of an expert on freed. Didn't you? Give me that one folly? Okay. Got you all did not know what you are signing up for when you chose to take a class from the two of us? Yeah. Sorry. I'm always sorry Paul is not. Yeah. All right. I've got my rim of my bowl. Now I'm ready to draw the neck dreams. There's some really strong shadows on those. It kinda reminds me of that Caravaggio still life that we looked at earlier. Yeah, way the lighting was so dramatic. Yeah, it's it's very similar to how we just shaded the sphere as well. So you'll see that shift from light to dark. High-contrast. I think it's interesting to have started with the sphere. And now you can see how that same idea applies when you have something that's sort of spherical, but it's also got some extra lumps and bumps and you can kinda see how the shadow is falling across those. So it's not a perfect circle anymore. It's kinda follows the contour of whatever shape it is. That's a good word. I like that contour. I'm just full of the good word. Geo are just full of it. Well, we knew that. Okay. Alright, I've got one nectarine. It's due. There's another little one that's kinda tucked in behind that to the right. And it overlaps the handle of the picture just a little. So actually, that tells me I need to make my first nectarine a little wider. Here we go. To nectarines down one more to go, we're getting there. Okay, then we have this last one over here that just picks up over the edge of the bowl, just a smidge. Then it comes back down about here. Gorgeous. How are you all doing? Hope you are having fun with this. Don't get overwhelmed or stressed if it isn't looking perfect. If, if the proportions don't feel right. If something, if something feels off, take a minute and just hold up your drawing so that it's vertical. And let your eyes go back and forth between your drawing and the screen where you're seeing the reference and see if you can identify what the issue is. It's not a bad thing to have proportion issues or to have drawing issues. Everybody does well except Melissa. We're not going to go there. Most most most people will have to make some adjustments as they go. And that is okay, that is part of the process and I think it is very easy when people are first starting out to get overwhelmed, to feel like, Oh, I did, I made a mistake. I must not be good at this, I should just quit. Don't do that. Everybody makes mistakes and the mistake is a great thing because that means you can use that as an opportunity to figure out, well why is what is actually wrong? And that's where the learning happens. So don't, don't get discouraged if it doesn't look exactly right, try to figure out how to fix it. Yeah. And I think it's a good thing once you get to a point where you can see what's not working in your drawing and you can go back and fix it. And I think it takes a little while to get to that point. But the more you look at objects and shapes. Contours, as Paul taught us that word today. And he ellipses and it will start to notice the difference. You'll start to see what is different about your drawing versus the reference. So just keep looking and maybe look at things a little bit differently than how you normally look at them. So look at the shapes and look at the relationships between the shapes and look at the objects for what they are rather than what they represent in your mind. Yeah, that's a big one. I think if you can if you can get yourself to see the shapes and not focus so much on what it actually is that you're drawing too. But just look at the shapes and the relationships between the shapes that will make a big difference in your drawing. Right now I'm going in and just sketching out the cast shadows that are on the table. And that'll be the last step then before it's time for me to start shading. That's exciting. It is. It's nice to have a little bit longer to work on these drawings I've been filming a lot of, a lot of our classes are like learn to draw in 30 days or something where we'll have just 10 min per video. So I've had to do a lot of very quick drawings, which are fun too. But it is nice to have a little bit longer to spend with you-all. Yes. Thank goodness for me. I am not a fast draw or I will not get it done in 10 min. So thank goodness for 30 min. I wanna make Melissa do a 10-minute 10 would be terrible. Drought. Date every minute of it. That's an exaggeration. I would be upset after 10 min because I would not be done. And that just makes me want to make you do it even though I know I know it does. Okay. So I've got everything sketched out. I'm taking a minute just to look and compare and make sure things feel like they're in the right spot. I don't see any issues jumping out at me. So what I like to do is to start especially when there's a dark background like this. I actually like to go and put a little bit of that darkness into the background right along the edges of the objects. You don't need to fill in the whole background. That would probably take the rest of our time for this drawing. But if you just do it along the edge like I'm doing right here, and let it just do it, just go a little ways out and then let it fade. That's all you really need in order to be able to see the relationship between the background value and the value of the objects. So go all around the edges and put that dark value in first just, just along the edge a little bit and then let it fade. This is probably contrary to how you might have wanted to start. Most people, when they're drawing or painting, they're more excited about the subject matter than the background, especially if the background is just a flat value like this. So the temptation is to want to just jump in and start working on the stuff. I mean, you certainly can. It's it's you're drawing. You can do whatever you want. But I would encourage you to put the darkness in the background first because like we were saying earlier, the values are so relative that if you get that darkness established, it will help you to make everything else kinda in relation to that, things will start to pull together more. I think that's a good point, Pali and I am somebody who immediately wants to jump to the subject. And it is hard for me to start with the background because it's not as exciting. I want to do the exciting part, but it will make a big difference because you will be able to tell when your values fell off. Maybe other values in the drawing that should feel as dark as the background aren't as dark as the background because you haven't put that in there yet. So it'll give you a nice gauge as to whether you're headed in the right direction or not. Yeah. Yeah, the whiteness of the paper can really skew things. You don't even realize it. But when you're, when you're trying to match the values, if your paper is white everywhere, but your reference has a lot of darkness like this than it, It's just not going to be easy to match all of those. So I like to always try to get some of the darkest dark in first. And then that gives me a little bit more of a sense of the range that I'm going for. As you're doing nachos, think about how you approach your value scale. So how did you make that darkest, dark pencil? Did you use what pressure did you use to go back to that? Yeah, I did actually jump up here to as six B pencil. So if you have one of those fancy pencil sets with different numbers, this would be a good time to pull out one of your B pencils that has a higher number because that's going to give you a nice dark value. But if you're just using one pencil for everything, that's okay too. You'll just have to press harder back here for the darkness or layer that value over top itself. She can't let that one go. It's my main hall. You cannot pry it from my fingers. All right. That's fair. I'm almost done going all the way around here. Then we can jump into the fun part. Not that this isn't fun. Well, it's good practice, right? Yeah. Okay. Let me just go along the edge of my table here. You can you can make this as, you know, go as far as you want it to you. And then eventually you may decide you want to fill in the whole background black so it matches the photo. But this is just a nice way to get that value in there so you can see it and then you can do that later. Also, I kinda like doing it this way because you save a little bit more of the white paper that you can have as a spot to rest your hand on if you're working trying to reach into certain areas, you might need a spot to rest your hand and if it's all shaded, then you're going to smudge it. So this is a way to avoid that to you. You can always take another piece of paper to a clean piece of paper and lay it over top underneath your hand so you don't smear everything. Alright, so I've got the background, at least the edge of the background in. So now I'm gonna go and look for where I see similarly dark values in the objects themselves and also in the shadows. So I'm going to start in the nectarines. And if you look at the left side of the neck dream that's in front is, I see a very similar dark value there. So I'm gonna go ahead and start laying that in. And you do see a just a little bit of that reflected light that Melissa was showing you on the sphere, on the left edge of that nectarine. Just a sliver. But it is there and that's what helps it to stand out from the one that's next to it. So I'm gonna put that in seamless. I paid attention. I now look at you. Get an a plus today. Yeah, you listen to something I said I am shocked. That's a first. Don't ever expect it to happen again. Hope you enjoyed it. You all really need to get yourself a friend that you can torture for 20 years like I have with mostly really special. So special. We have done a lot of crazy things together. Mostly through Paul suggestions or maybe stick and him taking it seriously. Yep. Okay. And so now I'm just pulling that dark shadow toward the light side and getting a little bit lighter as I go, just like you did with the sphere. Trying to just match the values, you can look at the nectarine and see where are the little highlights spots. There's one right here. There's one that's kinda right here. There's one right here. So those are the only areas that are gonna be the pure white of the paper. Everything else has at least a little bit of value to it. So you might even want to pull out your value scale to kinda hold up and compare to the reference and see if you can match, you know, what, what value is needed for different parts. One nectarine almost done. I'm going to jump over here to this one on the left, which also has a lot of dark values in it. See how the darkness is on. It gets darker as it goes down into the bowl because the light can't reach it there. I should've asked you when we first pulled up this image, I don't know what I was thinking, but as you're shading, as you're working on this now, look at it and ask yourself, where is the light coming from this image? Melissa, do you know? Yeah. It looks like it's coming from the right side, but it's also it looks like it's not it's not directly a bulb. It's a little bit kind of in the middle on the right-hand side. Exactly. And I say that job, Melissa, thank you. I'm looking at where the highlights are and usually that shows me the level at which the light is. So it's kind of in the middle that nectarine right in the front has really bright highlight on the right-hand side, but it's not the top of it. Towards the middle. You can also kinda tell by the direction that the shadows are falling to you. If the light is more above, the shadows aren't going to be as long and stretched out. If the light is more to the side and there'll be long like this. You get to do a little bit of detective work when you're doing an observational drawing like this, it's good to take the time to study it for a minute and try to figure out what's going on here. Just using my eraser now and I'm pulling back out some of those highlights. You can the nice that I loved these kneaded erasers because you can just kinda squish them and shape them through whatever shape you need to get into those spots. They're perfect for a drawing like this. All right, getting my last nectarine. It has a little bit of a white highlight area right here. Then everywhere else gets some value. Just like with all of the other stuff we've done today, you can always go back and adjust values as needed. If you put something down and you end up finding that it's too light or too dark. Don't just keep it. Try this, see if you can adjust it. That's the adjusting is the most helpful part. I think one thing to think about when you're translating a color image to just black and white, is think about how different colors would relate to value. So think about how those nectarines in the more yellow areas would be lighter in value. And the more red or deep red areas would be darker in value. And then think about that yellow picture. Yellow is more of a high key color to use a word that Paul Thomas earlier. So let's see, Fancy, fancy. It's got to be a little bit lighter in value than the blue. The blue is gonna be more of a mid value or darker value. Which is something to think about when you're translating something that's in color to black and white. Yeah, every color has its own kind of inherent value. But then there can also be different shades of a color you like you see with the picture. Inherently a lighter value than the blue. But it still has shadows and highlights, which is just that the shadow isn't, doesn't get quite as dark as the shadow does on the, on the blue bowl. Yeah, If you look at the two blues in the image, so the blue of the bowl and then the blue of the tablecloth. So the blue of the tablecloth is obviously much lighter than the blue of the bowl. So it is going to be a lighter value when you're translating into black and white. Yeah. But they're both blue. So just something to think about as you're drawing. I think that's one of the things that you really start to appreciate. The more you draw and paint is just how many different subtle variations and complexities there are in everything. I mean, this looks like a relatively simple image. But as you get into it, you can see that there's so much going on. I'm shading this side of the bowl rate now. And there's so many different little shifts in value that you can pick up on if you really study it. And try to pay attention to where those different. Darks and lights fall. That's what will make your drawing start to become more dimensional. My bowl filled in here. I'm going to do this part underneath the little stand that the bowl is on. It's pretty dark on the left. And then you can see how in the highlight part it's a little bit darker over here and along the bottom. And then it gets lighter as it comes up. That looks pretty good. I'm going to jump over to the picture now. Start on the handle. Get the shadow. See that little sliver of light on the top of the handle. So I'm not shading there and leaving that. Okay. And then also on the picture, you see there's a little bit of reflected light on the left side up here. So I'm going to start the shadow in just a little bit to leave room for that reflected light. Fill in all this part. It's going to be a masterpiece. You guys were working on it. We're getting there. Yes. This might even be worthy of hanging on the refrigerator. I just got a little alert that my time is up for this one, but I'm gonna go a few more minutes so I can finish it. You don't mind, do you? I don't mind. Let's do a poly. We'll just cut this timeout of yours and you'll have to draw faster. Oh, I don t think anyone will mind if we go 2 min over. I think it'll be okay. Okay, so I'm working my way down the picture here. Let me first get in here and do the inside of the top. Can see how the light, it actually does, the reverse of how the light is hitting everything else. It's actually darkest on the right. That's because that's where the light could not get down inside of that section, but it does manage to hit a little bit over here on the left side. So this is a good example of how you have to draw what you see, not what you know. Because you might think, well the light's coming from the right. So it should be lightest here in darkness there. But in this case, that's not what happened because the light is actually doing the opposite of that little bit of a shadow. Then let me get edge here. The shadow down here on this rounded part of the picture is not quite as dark as the shadow. On the top part. See how it gets a little bit darker towards the top. Interestingly, because I think there's a bit of reflected light there as well wrapping around the bottom part. Okay. Then I'm going to fill in the rest of my picture here with a very light value. Just go back over to smooth it out. Get it to blend into the shadow more. And then I'm going to use my eraser to pull out the highlight that I see here. There's a little one right up here. We're getting almost there explaining. Okay, so all I have left are the shadows on the table. And you can see how right here next to the picture, the shadow is darkest at the BSW, just like how you did on your sphere drawing. And that's because that's the part that is the most shielded from the white. Then it gets a little bit later, it's still dark, but it gets a little bit lighter as it moves to the left and to the front. Okay. And then this one over here, same kind of thing. It's darkest right at the base. Then it gets a little bit lighter as it moves away. Still pretty dark though. Almost done, almost. Smooth out my shadow a little bit. Clean up some smudges. See. I know you're rubbing off on me. You can't help you. Nope, it's all your fault. Alright, so there is my finished drawing. I could certainly spend more time on this, but I want to give Melissa chance to do her life drawing to that. She's going to show you guys a new technique, but feel free to keep working on it as long as you need to, as long as you want. And then when you're ready, we'll do the next step. 6. Lesson 5: Reverse Drawing: Okay, everybody, Great job with that. We're gonna do something a little bit different for the last exercise. So we're going to be drawing a different subject, the summer gonna be drawing a leaf. But we're actually going to start with a mid tone. So we're going to cover our paper and pencil, and then we're going to use an eraser, erase out some of the lighter values, and then use a pencil to add some in some of the darker values in. And I'll show you how to do that. All you need as an eraser and some pencils. You ready, poly, ready. I'm excited. Let's do it. Let's do it. Okay, everybody, we've made it to our last exercise. For this exercise, we're gonna do something a little bit different from what we did in the last one. So in the last one we started with the white of the paper. I think that's how most people began a drawing. But what we're gonna do this time is we're going to create a middle tone. So if you remember our value scale, that value we did right in the center. That's what we're going to start with. We're going to take any of our pencils. Depending on what pencils you have, you can use whichever one you want. Actually have this graphite stick here and it has a larger area that I can use to draw with. So you're either going to take something like this, a piece of charcoal, anything that you can use to create a large area of the same value. So just start drawing on your paper. I'm just going to create a square here, all of that middle value. So if you want to pull out your value scale again and use that as a guide to kinda create something similar. You can do that. I'm just going to start drawing on our paper. So exciting, difficult. Lots of concentration. This part should be relaxing and pretty easy, just like scribbling on your paper. Yeah, it'll get harder soon. Yeah, It's quite as simple as this step, but enjoy it while we're here, I guess. Yeah. So the idea here is that we're starting with a mid tone and we're going to build our drawing on top of that so you don't want to make it so dark that you can't draw on top of it, or that you won't be able to see your graphite lines on top. You also don't want to make it so light that it won't matter if you start erasing certain areas of it. So we want to create that middle value that will allow us to kind of pick out those highlights with a kneaded eraser or whatever eraser you have on hand. But then also make it easier for us to have a place to start with our drawing. So we are capturing a lot of those mid tones, the beginning, and we don't have to worry about putting those in as we go. We can just focus on adding some of the shadow areas and some of the highlights and make it look like a more finished drawing. If anybody's ever done painting, It's kind of like doing an underpinning or kind of coding your canvas to begin with in a certain color or a certain value is just that. It gives you a place to start when you're not starting on a white piece of paper or a white canvas. So I'm going to grab my scale and just see if it's feeling similar to that middle one in it is it's getting close. Feel free to use the side of your pencil. It might be a little bit faster for you. If you have something like graphite powder, you could use that. If you have charcoal, they didn't use the side of a piece of charcoal. Whatever is easiest for you, whatever you have on hand will work. You can also do this technique with toned paper. Like if you get a piece of paper that already has a value to it, like a medium gray. And then you can draw on it with white charcoal or white pencil. And then also with your regular graphite. Gives you the same same kind of with that. Yeah. So if you want to go out and buy some gray paper that's already done for you. You don't have to worry about coloring in and yourself. Makes it a little bit easier for you. Then you can always get a white colored pencil or black colored pencil and go on top of it. Obviously, the eraser method won't work if you're just doing it on gray paper, but you can always add the white of the highlights. Okay. Alright, mine is getting close. How is yours? Polley? Mine is good. Good. Okay, Beautiful. So are we going to smooth this L? Yes. So I have a paper towel. I'm just gonna go on top of it and I'm going to kind of blend it a little bit just to kind of make it more smooth surface to work on. I think the, once you go back and start erasing areas, it might show a little bit easier if you blend it a little bit, you could use your finger or you could use one of those paper blending tools. I think we used to call them stumps. That's what they're called the author calls is that it's not like the technical term. I think it is. Okay. I have no idea, but apparently, that's what they are actually called. You know me. I'm all about the vocabulary today. The vocabulary today, you've taught so many things today, Paul. Just a fountain of knowledge really? Yes. Okay. Alright, so hopefully everybody has a little square of value. It's kinda like a larger version of what you created in that first step. That's your middle value. Okay? So next thing we're gonna do is we're going to take one of our pencils. If you have a softer pencil that will draw a little bit darker, you probably want to get that out. Will be harder to get some of your pencil lines to show up on this middle value, then it would be on a lighter value. I'm actually going to grab another paper towel because I'm going to end up getting this all over my hands. That's part of the phone. Pole loves to be messy. I will not enjoy that part. I am going to protect myself from any worry that my hands are covered. Well, they already are coupled graphite. Oh my goodness. All right. Oh, panic, panic sets in. You could just embracing. I could just embrace it. I could, but I will not. The next thing we're gonna do is we're gonna look at our reference. So we have this reference of the leaf. And we're gonna kinda decide where we want the leaf to fall within our square here. So this leaf that's pretty well within the square. I'm gonna decide where my stem is. I'm going to start with that. It's a little bit to the right hand side and towards the bottom. So I'm just kinda make an initial line in here. And I'm going to start with the stem at the bottom, and I'm going to continue it all the way up through the middle of the leaf, which is going to give me a guide to work from. I'm drawing my leaf here. At the top there, it kind of turns into that pointy end of the lease that's folded over. Hopefully, everyone can see this. I'll try to make this a little bit darker so you can see it on camera. So just have my initial stem and that vein as it runs right through the middle of the leaf. All right, From there I'm going to decide where the base of my leaf starts, how long I want my stem. So I'm gonna come up, I don't know, maybe a third of the way up the stem. I'm just going to start drawing those other veins that come out from the sides. And that'll kinda give me a guide of where those other parts of the leaf are gonna be. I'm gonna draw the one on the right hand side. I'm going to draw the one on the left-hand side, just deciding how long those should be. And the way I'm deciding that I was just looking at the photo and deciding which one's longer. Where are those hit within my square. So I've put the one on the right side and the one on the left side. Right there. I want to kinda decide where are the sides of the leaf far. So I'm going to start at the top, middle, that little triangle shape that folds over. And then we're gonna continue to draw the rest of that center shape. Paying attention to where I've drawn those veins. How big I want the different shapes of my leaf to be, what the angles are. So really pay attention to those angles where it turns, where it heads in a different direction. We're curves a little bit. It's a lot to think about. It's a lot to think about. The thing you wanna do as you're drawing from reference. You want to look at the reference a lot so your eyes are constantly moving back and forth. And you're judging relationships based on what you're seeing. So as I'm drawing the right side of the leaf, I'm kinda deciding where are those angles and curves are dependent on the other side. So I want it to be. What symmetrical? The right side, it looks like it's a little bit bigger. Those curves hit in similar areas depending on the angle of the leaf. So I'm looking at all those different things as I'm drawing the contour as Paul taught us that word earlier today. Yeah. I'm looking at all those different I have a question. Yes, I have a question, Melissa. Yes. Paul raising raising my hand here and your clients? Not that this has happened at all. What did you do if I were if I were to draw a line that perhaps I don't like and want to change. How do I fix that? Since there's already, you know, if I erase it, then it's going to lift up that background to you. So what would you suggest? I think the easiest thing here is two. You could try going back in with your paper towel. I'm kinda rubbing it out to see if that would work. If your lines are light enough, you might be able to rub it out, get rid of it, blended into the background. Yeah. If not, if you've already tried to go in with the eraser and here I'll just do it really quickly so we can figure out how to adjust. But see, I went and I love that. I love that Melissa has to pretend to mess up. I'm gonna pretend that I messed up. So I'm just going to go back and I've already erased this little line. I wasn't happy with where it was. I'm going to add just a little bit more of my value and the background and you shouldn't need too much. Then I'm just gonna go and I'm going to blend it and you shouldn't be able to see it anymore. You should be able to make it disappear. With the weeds. A little bit. Yeah, that's a little bit more complicated than it would be if you were just drawing on the white paper, obviously, but you can just use really light sketchy lines to begin with. I'm drawing a little bit darker just so you can see it. But if you do those sketchy lines to begin with, it was should be pretty easy to make them just disappear with the paper towel or a Kleenex or your finger or if you just rub it out, should be able to make it just kind of disappear into the background. Or I mean, one thing to think about is a leaf as an organic shape. Every leaf is going to be different. It doesn't have to look exactly like what you're staring at. If your leaf is slightly different, that's totally fine. Who even are you right now? I do not know this version of I think the leaf is something that's very organic and a little bit looser and you definitely have some more leeway as far as like the sheep. Lot different than if you're drawing a portrait or something? Yeah. Pretty much want to make sure you get things in the right spot. Yeah. This I think you can kinda just do a loose contour and it will still look like a leaf if you've got some points and some stems and some veins in there, I think it's something that's pretty forgiving. Alright, so I have my contour of my leaf. I'm just gonna kinda look back at the shape and the photo and just see if there's anything I need to adjust or change of certain areas of the leaf tend to match up with other areas of the leaf. Some areas need to go smaller or bigger. I think I'm pretty happy with what I have here. Shocker. Don't listen to hecklers in your life. Everyone. Haters gonna hate. Okay? Alright, So now that I have the contrary, my leaf, I'm going to go back and I'm going to add some of those veins. Poly, How is your leaf coming? I am already drawing veins. Oh my goodness. Look at this. Look at the Haeckel's me and he's already in there. Well, I intentionally slowed you down with that question so I could see you could pull a cell part of your scheme. Yeah, it's finding dirty everyone. It's not a competition as he's competing to have. Have you, I recently heard about this thing that happens. I'm kind of intrigued by it. Okay. You ever heard of art battles? I have not, but I feel like we've been doing it for the last 20 years. Yeah, we we should get some royalties. I think we even know they have them nationwide in. I have some friends who did it and it sounds kinda fun. I think you would despise it. It sounds terrible. I don't even think that it sounds fun, but yeah, go ahead. You go. And everybody who enter is kinda stands around in the center of the stadium or wherever it is being held. And the artists are all like in a circle in the middle with their canvases facing out and they have a certain amount of time. I don't know what it is. Maybe like a half hour or something and they have to make a painting and then half an hour. Yeah, it's it's very short. I know it's not a long time. And then I think the crowd chooses from, with applause or something who like advances to the next level. And then it just keeps going until they have a winner. And then they go on to the regional art battle. And then there's a state art at all and then there's a nationwide I think I want to do it. I can tell it to you doing it. I could totally see me having the worst moment of my entire life. It would be part of the reason why I'm not on social media because I can't I can't deal with like Oh, like this piece or don't like this piece. I couldn't No, I can't do it. Yeah. I mean, I don't like the I don't tend to like the competitive aspect of it, but I liked the speed aspect of you would be very good at that. And just doing it with an art, making art with an audience. I didn't show it. Yeah, you do enjoy that. Alright, so I have my drawing here. I have most of my genes put in here. So now that I have kind of a basic outline of where I want things to go. I'm going to start thinking about value. And the way you would approach this is gonna be similar to what we did before, where we're going to think about where the darkest darks are and where the lightest lights are, and that's how we're going to create this. But the way we create those lightest lights are going to be through the use of our eraser. And I would highly recommend a kneaded eraser if you don't already have one for this step. But I think the easiest way to start here is similar to how we started the last one. So I'm going to start putting in the darkest value behind the leaf. So we have definitely a dark background and I'm going to start laying that in because that will help me judge the values on the rest of the drawing. So I'm just going to start. Are you just doing it along the edge and fading it out? Yeah. Yeah. I think just for the sake of time, we'll just kind of, like Paul said, just work around the edges just so we can get an idea of how that dark background relates to the mid value of the lease and some of the lighter values of the lease. I'm just dropping that in there. Like Paul said, don't worry about filling in the whole background. Just couldn't fill in enough to give yourself an idea of where that dark is. You want to kind of blend it out with your paper towel. You can do that too. It'll probably blend pretty easily with that background that we've already created. Just putting that dark shadow around it, it makes the leaf Blake start to pop out too. Yeah, it definitely will add some depth to your drawing right away. Because right now it's pretty flat because it's all the same value. I like instinct gratification like that, That's nice. I know that you do. And then this will also help you be able to see where those lighter areas are because there really is no pure white. And this leaf, there's some areas that are a little bit later obviously that we would consider the highlights, but I don't think you're gonna get a pure white here. Yeah. So that's where starting with this midground is really going to be helpful because you really would have to lay off all that in eventually if you started with the white. Yeah, it's not such a drastic step. When you go to add in those dark values. It's not like when you're putting a dark onto a white piece of paper and it's such an extreme jump, just kinda like nudging it towards dark or when you're erasing your nudging it towards light. But you're kinda starting from a more middle ground value, which hopefully will make it easier for you when you start adding new values because you're not, you're not gonna have to worry about middle value. Again, you can really focus on those highlights. You might want to just pick one section or one part of the leaf to do to finish since we only have about 8.5 min, so no yeah, you're the boss here. That sounds good to me. You know me, I'm finishing things that are not. I will just say no, but if you can show them how to do it on one part, I'm pretty confident they can apply that to the rest of them. Yeah. Yeah. So I have a good start on the upper portion here and the right side, so I'll probably just focus on that. So let me get a little bit of this background layer in here. And then When did out a little bit with my paper towel. Just going to add some softness. Okay? Alright. So the next thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna get my kneaded eraser. What kind of format into a point almost like it's a pencil or something to draw with and start deciding where some of those lighter areas are. So the first one I'm noticing is over on the right here. And I'm just gonna kinda pull some of that graphite out until I feel like it's starting to get as light as I want it to and make the shape that I want it to. So I'm going to pay attention to the shape of those highlights. Now the working within the contour of my leaf. You can use kind of like a dabbing technique to pull some of that graphite out. You can kind of use it like a pencil, like a paintbrush almost gives it a little bit lighter. You could do a lot with this eraser technique where it really starts to create some depth just with the eraser. So pay attention to where those lights are and then where it shifts into a darker area as you're doing this. And it really is not even so there's, there's a lot of wrinkles and there's a lot of folds and things in the leaf that you'll have to pay attention to. Anything the eraser will work really well for you and pulling some of that out. It's almost like fabric, the way it folds. There are a lot of shifts from light to dark. It's another one of those, like, it doesn't look very complicated when you first see the photo, but then when you really start studying it, There's a lot happening there. Yeah, there's a lot of variation in value here. Very subtle that you really start to see it once you start paying attention to where all that is and then how it relates to your drawing and where it needs to pull up some of that value to create that lighter highlight. I think a big part of this whole process is learning how to really see like an artist. Because we have to pay attention and notice so much more than what the average person would need to see with this leaf. They would just look at it and be like, okay, there's a leaf but we have to look at it and study each little section and see how the values and the textures relate. Yep. Paul and I said that all the time in our classes that it's really just about taking the time and paying attention to what you're looking at to really learn how to see it for what it is and not just what you imagined it to be. And I think that's one of the most important things you'll ever learn in drawing is how to really look at something for what it truly is and how it usually appears. And that will take some time. You will find that it's, we're basically going to ruin you because that's our plan. Will be able to turn it off. I had so many students. Tell me after taking classes that there'll be driving down the road and they'll look out and I'll have to pull over because the suddenly they just seeing the world so differently than how they, how they did before. And it's pretty amazing. I love it because it really does change the way you see. Yeah, yeah. You'll start to appreciate things in a different way for sure once you start realizing how much detail and the relationships between objects and the way light hits them. It's a lot to appreciate it. Thanks so much more, I think. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Then when we get into color, that's a whole other where yeah, definitely. And artists see color differently than most other people. They will see so many more colors because they're so used to looking for them. It's very interesting. Alright, so I think the average person will just say like This is red. But the artists would be like, well, what kind, what kind of 1 million shades an artist is it okay with just saying red? Do you know it has to be more complex than that because it is, Let's just start looking. Alright, so I have a lot of my lighter value is pulled out here, so I'm going to start going back in and adding some of my darker values. And you just do that with a pencil the way you did and our and our other activities. But you're just kinda working to add to the value that you've already created. So it's kind of like just creating that the darkest part of your value scale. Almost where you're starting from a mid tone. So again, you're just paying attention all the little folds and all the little changes and where it's a little bit darker versus a little bit later. So how do those values change? How much do they change? Are there little areas of highlight in there? Like if you really look at the veins, there is a small highlight on one side. You don't have to capture every detail, but it does help to capture the main areas of shadow versus light, just to kind of add some depth to what you're making. The object in front of you. I think sometimes it can be overwhelming when you start looking at something like this and you realize how much is going on and how many different shifts and variations there are. So it's good to have a strategy for figuring out how to tackle that. And I think if you do it in steps like what Molas is describing, like starting by just lifting out some of the bigger sections and looking for the overall value relationships. And then kind of honing in on two more smaller detailed kinds of things. That's one approach that can help it from keep it from feeling too overwhelming. Yeah. Definitely those I am definitely one who gets caught up in the details. I will keep going forever because I will see so much complexity. But it is good, especially when you're working with value to kinda established the main values and then go in and add more detail from there. Yeah. Otherwise you risk losing some of those big value relationships if you can, if you get too focused on the tiny stuff too soon, you might not you might not actually be paying attention to the overall big picture. Yeah, and that's definitely something I learned. I've always enjoyed drawing faces and I really enjoyed drawing features. And I would often focus on the features instead of focusing on the overall value of the face. And so I would get so lost in just like rendering and I, that I would forget that I had all these other value relationships within the face to worry about. And I would often lose the overall depth because I would be so focused on a single aspect of the drawling. So that's definitely something to pay attention to. Well, I'm glad I could help you learn to do better. Yes. Thank you. Paul. That was a joke by changing my artistic life. Why do you mean the right direction? Yes. She just needed so much help, so much. Hopefully people watching this video don't think we're actually fighting. This is just what we do. We just kinda like siblings. Yeah. Then if they do at least I would hope they find it entertaining. Exactly. Yeah, We're having our own art art battle here right now, right? Every month. Come back and check it out. Yeah. Yep. Alright. Well, I think we're getting close to time here, so hopefully everyone was able to take away enough from this. We aren't going to have time to finish the drawing today, but I hopefully gave you a good start. And understanding how to create value and a little bit of a different way. It's kind of starting from a mid value and then working from there. So I would just continue working on this. Do the other half of your leaf in a similar way. Pay attention to all those shifts in value and how things changed throughout the photo reference and throughout your drawing. And just keep at it. Keep looking at the reference, keep comparing, keeps seeing how the photo shifts in certain areas and deciding if your drawling shifts in the same areas. Feel free to change anything if you feel like it's just not working for your drawing, That's always an option too. But you can get, It's always good to kind of start with reference and work from there. Go ahead, three. Looks good. I think we're good. 7. Closing Thoughts: We did it. Now we are experts in value, right? Right. Yes. I am feeling much more expert-like. I hope Obama was the euro. It's view, always feel experts. We hope that you learned a lot during this class and really encourage you to keep practicing. Because the best way to reinforce these ideas is to choose subject matter that you're really interested in and apply these ideas to that. And just kinda keep in mind as you're looking for, for images to draw or paint a look, think about the light source and how that is affecting what you're seeing and how you can bring that out in your work. Yes, we hope this encourages you to keep drawing and also informs the other artwork that you're making. So think about your value before you start your next drawing or your next painting, we would love to see what you make, including your drawings that you made from this class today, and also anything that you make in the future using these ideas. Thanks everybody for being here, for sharing some time with us. Happy drawing, happy painting, happy art-making, everyone.