Still Life Drawing Reimagined: Simple Steps to Greater Results

1. Welcome :): What's up, guys is bouba here? I'm back again and my newest class and still-life drawing. In this class, you're going to be diving deep into the fundamentals of realism and how they can be applied to a still-life drawing will begin with some warm-up exercises designed to enhance our understanding of value edge in line, as well as some pro tips on creating elegant looking still life drawings. So I still lives, among other things, still-life drawing is one of the most accessible forms of art-making. We're constantly surrounded by objects in our daily life. Objects, by the way, which on the whole are low, more corporative than human beings. In addition, the simplicity of most everyday objects exist as the perfect for developing our skills. Whether that being composition, perspective, values, edges, etc. The rich history of still-life are two dates all the way back to ancient Egypt. It's growing in popularity through the Middle Ages, into the Early Renaissance and reaching one of its many averages in the late 16th century. The Dutch and Flemish masters, with all that in mind, much like you have been passionate about art-making since childhood and getting to where I'm at now until the third bits of struggle and self-doubts. Nonetheless, I persevered in my efforts and the improvements have followed. I see this do to encourage you to go into this class, we can use the ASM and the belief that if you put in the work, it will pay off. Best of luck to you all. See you soon. 2. Drawing Materials: In this video, I'll be giving you a quick rundown of the materials I'll be using for this class. If you have them, I'm using quite a bit and the rest are mostly ancillary. Over here I have my graphite pencils. My favorite brand is to Faber Castile and thousands series. I like these fences are lots because they hold really good taper, the very durable, and it feels good in the hand. Generally speaking, you want to avoid answers that are brittle. But besides that, most pencils can get the job done. In this short, I'm going to be using my for-each to H, H B2B. And for B pencils, each one of these pencils corresponds to a different value. And we'll assist me in describing the form of the objects will be drawing. Moving on to erasers conceptually have come to view the eraser and not just as a tool to correct mistakes, but as an additive instruments. One that contributes to the overall picture in a meaningful way on the table. Currently, I have irregular rubber eraser. It's useful for removing broad areas of value. I think you're all familiar with this is and how it functions. Next we have a clicker eraser from Pentel relatives, that rubber eraser to more precise erasing tool. It's easier to control. You also have the option of modifying its shape by shaving up parts of it with a blade. I don't use this a lot, but I like to have it around just in case I do use it. Next, I have a kneaded eraser Buffy record. So this is definitely my favorite, the reason tool, one that I use very often. It's incredibly malleable as you can see. And great, not just for erasing with dropping the value in aspects of the drawing. Here we have an elastic my eraser, in essence, smaller, more precise version of click Eraser. This one is by Tombow Mono and it's really good for specific erasers. And here's like the hair and the portraits when you're putting our highlights, for example. And then the outlining stage when you're erasing smaller pencil marks, erasers. I know it's a lot here. He says, I don't know what I need so many, I'm just calling them at this point. Nonetheless. We have the fabric, Estelle perfection Raisa. But simply it's an eraser. Designs appear and feel like a pencil in your hand. He really is interchangeable with Yellowstone, my eraser. So if you're on a budget, I would suggest just picking one of the 21 is a bit more flexible than the other races and they can occasionally colored residue to try to be careful the amount of pressure you apply when you use it in front of us. Now is a mechanical pencil. This one is 0.7 millimeters by Staedtler. I really like having these around because the absence of sharpening requirements makes it easier to be more efficient. It's kinda move to the early stages of the drawing a little quicker. I also have my competence here, which enables me to get accurate measurements when my grid. So the grid boxes I'm going to use later on in the class, I'm going to use the con past, ensure that the highest and the widths all accurate. All around. My choice of paper for this class is the Master's Touch Bristol velum sketchpad, Bristol element. The name refers to the finish of the paper and more importantly, the tooth contained within vellum paper generally utilized between the roughness you find in a typical watercolor paper. Platelet finishing the Bristol Smooth. Ultimately what you're looking for in a paper as one with enough tooth to enable you to build up successive layers of graphite without getting glossy and maintain its integrity even after repeated attempts at erasing the same areas. This is a pet proportion dividers. I got this one off Amazon. It's excellent for making comparisons and the accuracy of your shapes and distances between your drawing and the reference. If you're someone who struggles with getting a solid outline on paper and starts to invaluable tool and one that I recommend in previous classes, I've demonstrated how I use them just in case you need to, the instruments need a bit of guidance. Going to put us in bristle brush size two round. I know what she's thinking. A bit of an old school, it's using a drawing, but it has its merits. To me. It's a kind of subtler version, probably blending stump, it helps in smoothing out but passages of value in Detroit and softening value transitions and generating facilities in the process of achieving even tone, I find it's better to use a stiffer brush than a softer one. And also more is less with the pressure for sharpening my pencil is I found using an exact knife. Sharpening blocked the most effective exact tonight if you can find in a stationary store or aligned on the sharpening blog, on lesions website. Alternatively, if you can get your hands on a piece of fine sandpaper, that'll also work a bit of a revelation for me finding these tools because prior at stromatolites with sharpness, as you guys know that, to break the often. So that's YouTube. You might want to get this dynamic duo try it. So that's it for the materials. It's pretty simple. That's the beauty of pencil drawing is you can do so much with so little. You gotta get paper, solid pencil, lots of enthusiasm. There's nothing you can do with that said, let's get drawing. 3. Warm-up exercises: Value Control: Before immersing ourselves fully into the rigors of the final drawing, it's nice to warm up our bodies and our minds with some exercises that will aid us in our ability to execute later on. So grab yourself a drink later music, let's kick things off. Our first exercise here is all about value control will be creating gradients or value Moreno from my lightest values on the left. So our darkest values on the right, the pencils will be using are two H pencil HP to be on for B pencils moving right along, we will apply base value without sewage pencil illuminating the white of the paper and filling all the little holes on a tooth from there, I'm continuing to build up the value of my two H pencil. Apply my pencil strokes vertically and horizontally, striving to maintain even pressure and enlightened. From time to time, I also use a cotton bud and my brush to smooth out the values of bits and helping making those transitions look more natural. I think a good way to think about this exercise is we're basically creating transitions between individual value segments. So looking at the diagram on the left, you can see we have a value 0 and value one, value two, value three, and so on and so forth. By softening the transitions between each segments, we get closer to what we have on the diagram on rights. And we soften these transitions by putting in the intermediate value between each value segments, between say, segments 23, there's gonna be a 2.5 value and it's that value we have to work on to make that transition smooth. It's important at this point not to push too hard with your pencil because that will lead to graphite shine, which is essentially a glossy look to your drawing that can make it hard to photograph or just to look at as you build up your values with your HB pencil and it's on your TV pencil. Make sure to overlap the areas you've developed with the a to H pencil and doing nothing hockey brush transition smooth. As you draw close to the ground most portion of the scale switching our HB Frazzini pencil will serve us well immediately you will notice that to be significantly softer and darker effect, which is consistent with graphite pencils on the whole. As you move from left to right, our pencils are going to become darker. And also software applying value, my TV pencil with the principles remain the same very often direction of your strokes draw more from your arms and your wrist. Keep a light hand, squint your eyes to see the big picture and the transition between things. In order for it to maybe kinds of drawing, once we must learn to control our pencil and the tendencies of these tools that are inimical to the finished that we're after. Pencils can be very grainy, so use your kneaded eraser and controlled pressure to minimize this. Pencil points have a small surface area and are very slow and building up valley to use our stumps and brushes, spread things out. If you can control the expression of value and make soft subtle transitions here, you will find it much easier when you transition to more complex forms. That concludes our body control exercise. Mutual questions to ask yourself in this moment include, do my values move from light to dark and smooth, uneven steps happen instances of graininess or dark spots on my lights, lights enough and I my darks dark enough. If you can answer these questions in the affirmative, has any measuring high fire from me to you? Well done. And if you haven't taken a break, watch the video, try your hand again at the exercise and I'm sure you get it eventually, but that's it. I'll see you next one. 4. Warmup-exercises: Creating 3d objects: The first geometric shape we're going to look at his acute variations of this can be seen in many everyday objects. Thus, the ability to draw and shade a Q well, will help us when you progress to more complex subjects. When constructing a cube, I like to start off with the square, making sure my lines are parallel and as straight as I can make them. From there, I add to the corners straight lines perpendicular to my initial lines and connect them together. Alternatively, you can draw overlapping squares and just connect the corners widths in parents. Having done that, we must now choose the location of our light source, in this case, the left-hand corner. Based on that interval, I'll begin by shading the front plane of the cube, which is furthest away from the light source, completely in shadow. Once that's completed, our advantage to the next darkest plane, which is the top plane of the cube. Lastly, the scoping of the cube, which is the most, Let's parts of the objects. The cube, unlike the sphere and cylinder contains within it, mostly hard edges are faster turning forms. In other words, the changes in the plans are more abrupt and a light effect changes most dramatically. Hopefully, this exercise will train your eyes to look for those moments but abrupt plane changes and assigned to them the correct edges. Onto the cylinder, I proceed by dark in an ellipse at the top, followed by two parallel lines and curved lines indicates the bottom plane. The same light source in mind, we can deduce that our values are going to move from light to dark in this direction. Next, our sketching the terminates with my blending stump. I'd like to begin with my shadows because their presence gives context to the light shape will eventually draw from the equity base value for the shadow, for indicating the core shadow, which is darker because it's receiving less ambient lights, almost always the values in the shadow should be compressed. In other words, when you squint your eyes, the entire value shapes you convergence with one big value. As we transition to the light shape, we'll begin with our darker tones, moving along to Terminator and softening the edges sheet. These dog has half-tones should be lighter than the values in our reflected lights. If we were to preserve a sensible luminosity and the light shape and stay true to natural principles as you build up our values, pass the dogs halftones and then to centralize our transition will become progressively more subtle. Reason being, values change very slowly near the lightest lights and dark and more dramatically as we approached the terminator. This principle is known as lambda to Michigan Law. Understanding this will help you a lot in the still-life drawing, whatever else you decided to join the future. In this sphere of light source, the situating are compliant and Hornet. To begin with the drawing and sketching rather roughly an approximation of a circle. I would also advise making five small lines in kind of a cross formation and connecting those lines because it's probably a bit more efficient. Next I joined an ellipse to define the boundary between shadow and light. Build up a base shadow value from there, indicates by core shadow, the procedure is very similar to the cylinder. Unlike the cylinder, we want to always keep adjusting the outline of the shape. Let's make it look more natural. As I build up my halftones in the sphere, I make sure to go around the sphere completely, leaving my center lights in the middle of the light shape. Remember that the dark is halftones and the most contrast is going to occur where light, meat shadow and the changes in values become progressively more gradual once we reach the center lights. All right guys, that wraps up our exercise on drawing and shading simple 3D geometric forms. The more you can visualize the nuanced forms will be drawn later in this lesson as what your practice here, the more convincing the illusion of reality be able to create in your artwork. 5. Warmup-exercises: Shading Techniques: In this exercise, we're going to transition from value control. So an exploration of different shading techniques. Be crosshatching and hatching primarily in the main drawing and some scribbling. But it's up to you to decide what technique you want to use. My mind's they'd go into this is not a striving for perfection, but an overview of some of the ways we can introduce variety. And so I'll mark making. The first shading technique we're going to look at is pretty straightforward. It's hatching. So it makes it an example as can be seen in the world are some of the old masters. This technique consists of unidirectional marks typically parallel to one another, although not necessarily greater lending structure to join. And you can vary up the distances between the strokes to alter the perceived lightness and darkness of an area. Moving onto crosshatching, you could consider this a variance of patching by adding overlapping strokes your existing hatch marks, you are effectively cross hatching. I find that when you make your overlapping hatch marks perpendicular to the previous ones in makes for a more appealing appearance. Although not always, I especially like this technique because I find it a very organic way to build up your drawing. So if you're like me, you probably like it Too. Movement from the arm is key here. That's quite a bit easier to make marks consistently that way. But using your wrist. We're looking at stifling or pointillism. I love this technique, particularly when I'm working in pen and ink, but also in graphite to, it's a very bold, unique Chain technique and not one that you see very often. The procedure is simple. You make secular dots with your pencil all around the form, gearing up the distance between the dots to change the value smallest, drop the value larger to lighten it. So here's some of what I think are excellent examples of pointillism in action. Onto scribbling. This method of shading lends itself to more tonal forms of drawing. And great, if you're looking for a softer, smoky aesthetic, SD Italians would say sfumato to propose action. All that is required is for you to make the lead two overlapping circles around the box until all the holes and the whites of the paper I failed. Different sizes of scribbles to be smaller or larger, I will give you a different visual impression. The smallest oligos would lead to more even flatter value, and the larger circles in more whimsical or stylized. Look. Alright, that's a wrap. For sure. This is just a starting point for the many ways in which you can add value to your drawings. It's a call to action to think creatively. I figure out what elements in your drawing you can tweak to make your own. Varying up the way you shade or a ***** drawing is just one of those ways. And hopefully it just as starting points for your own artistic exploration. 6. Warmup-exercises: Connecting the dots: Connecting the dots is the name of this exercise. At first glance, this might seem like a relatively trivial things to do, but it has been a tremendous benefit to me. These are be my hand-eye coordination, dexterity, as well as my ability to make confidence pencil strokes and brush marks. The process is simple. Create small circles, randomized across the page and connect them with C curves, s-curves, and streets. Our aim here is to connect them fluidly. Are they single stroke as opposed to multiple connecting ones? By doing this, we train our eyes and our hand to work in unison, produce lines that in of themselves possess an appealing rhythm and gesture. Look no further than the works of great answers like rum brands, Velazquez. So Roy, Yeah, just to name a few to find examples of how confidence mark-making can improve your artwork for the better. If you find yourself struggling to connect the dots in one fell swoop, I suggest moving your pencil from your shoulder with your whole arm, like a choir master conducting a chorus. Sometimes they make the motion in the air before I put it on paper just to get a feel for what the line should actually be like. Likely in everything practices key. And the more you do this, the more confidence you will feel and the better your mark making will be. Over the course of the many paintings and drawings you will make in your life, you will come to appreciate the more subtle elements of gesture on line quality and the elegance they lend to a work of art. That's all for this exercise. We can move on to the next one. 7. The Outline : Officially out of the stance of the outline stage, a goal in this moment with the drawing is to define the shapes that we see now reference as accurately as we can as our disposal will be a grid drawn lightly on the paper beforehand and I proportional dividers to help her check on measurements. For convenience, I have my reference photographs that's a black and white. I suggest doing the same, especially if you're a beginner at struggled with seeing values in full color. I also have the reference in full resolution in the projects and resources section. So feel free to use that supplements which you see on screen. I begin here in the lower left-hand corner, drawn the leaf or the left orange. My, I search for words, form of elite intersects with the grid lines, and I connect those points with straight lines. A lot of my attention is directed towards identifying and who breaks, connecting them to one another. A key advantage of using a grid was that he makes the task of utilizing negative shapes to verify accuracy lot easier. So when in doubt, look for those shapes are on your drawing and assess if the proportions are good on that. As you make your way into the second orange, who will serve you well to utilize horizontal plumb lines. So ensure that the alignments between the two oranges is as it should be. There's a tendency that exists within all of us to want to rush things, particularly at this point in the drawing. It's so important to take that step back mentally and physically to look at the drawing as a whole and search for those areas that look misalign or incongruous. Lay down those plumb lines once again, make those comparative measurements and dads your eyes back and forth constantly to your reference, a new drawing. It's always a good idea. Search on those larger shapes first, progressing into the Swallow ones from there, as you can see, the stalk of the rights orange, I initially identified as extremities, top, bottom, left, right, into that overall triangular shape. If I went into highlight the negative shape within, we do this because accurate proportions are hard to achieve. Thus by focusing on larger shapes first, you can ensure that time is not wasted drawn in details, wanting to discover to the wrong place. You've reached the end of the outline stage. Now's a good time to raise your grid lines. Search your drone for places where you can improve the gesture and has the proportions and add any additional info that can help you later on. So to wrap up in this video, we learned how to use a grid as a tool to develop an outline of our subjects. The importance of negative shapes and proportions and the value of plumb lines and keeping track of the accuracy of our shapes. That's all for now. See you soon. 8. Values Block In: In this part of the lesson, we're going to be blocking in our shadow shapes the background. And we elaborating on some of the contours we made in the previous stage. Like earlier, I'm starting in the lower left-hand corner. My only aim being to lay down as much graphite as I can to form a base value for the background. As I do, I pay careful attention to the shapes in the foreground. I want these shapes continuously improve, even if my focus, for the time being, it's on the background. I like to use my mechanical pencil for this part of the process, really, because it's so time-consuming already and any extra time spent shopping at pencil, then I can eliminate. I'm more than happy to do so. In addition to the background, we also apply any beast value to the shadows and the foreground. Ideally try to minimize the variations we see in our reference and have it all be one unified shadow value. If you find the values you're laying down or uneven or splotchy, understand first that is certain amounts of data is intrinsic to the medium, but also putting that your pen to show to the lights hand in a consistent motion will minimize this effect. When most of the background blocked in, I'll soften those initial marks with the blending stump and use the residual graph five to indicate the core shadow before we turn it back on my mechanical pencil to revivify the area. Moving on to the oranges themselves, I apply a layer of values. The shadow shape, lights it on the core shadow, but darker than the mean light shape. All these values, of course, significantly lighter than they will be in the end. You do this to build the drawing as a whole gradually with the understanding that is the relationship between things and Redzepi thesis that matters more so than the absolute values. At this juncture, I like to go back and redefine some of the shapes from my outline stage. No doubt some of our contours having lost and he's a value. So in order for us to preserve the integrity of our shapes, it's worth the effort to go back and make the adjustments. In your mind. Think of this as a trial run. You're building up your drawing, steering deeper into your subjects. Grasp more elements of its capture your imagination on a more practical level. Analyzing the shapes, the values, and the edges that will make your drawing jump out of the page. We're just about done with broken in our values. In this video, we learned some techniques and how to build up our background efficiently. We delineate it, simply add values into your lights and the shadow family have redesigned some of the shapes. That's all for this lesson. Catching the next one. 9. Refining the forms Pt.1: Finally, we're on to the fun stuff. Over the next few videos are going to be taking this join to finish. The steps are simple, but the task is far from easy. More than anything, careful observation and attention to detail will get us to the results we desire. In order for our drawing to look three-dimensional, the relationship between the values must be true to all be seen our reference. With that in mind, we have the white of the paper seven as the highest key value in the picture. So to keep things organized, I stopped by shooting in the dark is values I see. To establish the upper and lower limits of our value scale using my pencil, I'm putting down multiple layers of graphite. You bring up the value slowly in the background and shadows around the fruit. Periodically, you see me dabbing the surface of my paper lightly with my kneaded eraser. Those moments I'm attempting to even out to passage of value by removing the little dog inconsistencies. You will also encounter the reverse, which comprise a tiny bright spots where the tooth of the paper shines through. I find that going on with the background and lights and harder pencil like a to H or an HP can help you eliminate those bright spots and still preserve the value of the area? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. As I make my way into the shadow of the left orange, I begin by establishing the value of the core shadow, Keen it to the value of the background. Once I'm happy with the value in that area, I progressed to the parts of the shadow receiving the most reflected light because of the ambient lights in that area, it's going to be lighter than the core shadow, but only slightly. If you squint your eyes, the difference should be barely perceptible. So when in doubt, err on the side of making the reflected light to dark. I'm also adjusting the value and shape of the cast shadow and softening the transition between it and the form shadow by shading in an intermediate value. With all aspects of the drawing, I'd like to first work on the shapes in an area, then the values, and finally the edges. I do it in this order because the shape is, in a sense, the environments that the other elements live in. The value gives us information how the light interacts with the form. And the edges tell us how slowly or sharp D these forms are turning. Transitioning into the light shape. I'll begin with. My dark is half-tones. Which are all along the terminator, I'm going to gradually build up to that dark is Halftone, starting firstly my Twitch pencil and eventually my HB. All the while keeping at the forefront of my mind that the darkest values in my life family must be lighter than the lightest value in the shadow, lighter shadow value being the reflected light. At this stage of the drawing, parents dissimilarities between our exercise when rendering 3D geometric objects and what we're doing here. Visualize this orange as he's slightly more complex sphere and apply those same principles of units here, value, lightened, shadow separation, and soft with specific radiations in value from your dog has halftones to your lightest. I like to see my highlight for last and this time around, I decided to use many years Risa to dab the center of the light shape and reveal the white of the paper. This is something you can get creative with. You could also do this with your pencil eraser with some cross hatching of inspiring remarks. What we can do it like I did. It's really up to you. The local value of the leaf of the net orange is significantly darker than the values in the light shape of the orange. If you have your value scale from white to black, the leaves would be around the high dark and the light shape of the orange alight. Having said that the observable parts of the leaf are all in the lights family. So he stopped. His values should keep Clare of the shadow and the body of the orange. The values in the leaf move from dark to light from top right, bottom left with a couple of upward facing planes touching more lines than the forums surrounding it. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And the right leaf of the left orange, we have to remain value shapes with the transitions between them soft and the boundaries of the shapes comprised of mostly hard edges. That's a wrap for part one of refining the forms CAN to the next one. 10. Refining the forms Pt.2: As we make our final touches, and let's orange will serve as well to pause and reflect. Now the values you've created so far related to one another. First, on the macro level, we can see three main value groups before us. How do our lightest planes relates to our midtones? Midtones relates to our shadows. Or you're trying to avoid a situation where values in an area like this or as dark as values in here like that. And vice versa. The light is coming from the right-hand side. So the movement of value, she progressed from light to dark in that direction. Right? The right orange would be our focal points. Before anything else. Just the design of the shape. Darken the back on value and lights in the area of the background forces to be orange to create the effect of increased luminosity will achieve this effect, will get the values in the background. So the orange in small steps moving from dark to light. If the change in value is too abrupt, the effects will be lost. So a smooth transition from dark to light is watching for v, for the background. Tv for intermediate value, an HB fertilize its value in that section. Can also use your pencil eraser to lighten up some of the areas. If you have one. Beginning the right orange, I'm going to start by establishing my shadow shapes, keeping in mind the valley of the shadow. Now let's orange and trying to keep them similar. Lighting parts of the shadow on the leaf or the right orange to maintain that sense of luminosity by vignettes in the values. And the same way, bathroom. We spent our eyes to look at this area are fully, we can see that this section comprises of two main value groups. The dark band of value, sandwiched between two shadow shapes. If some of that darkness, it's important that we capture differences like this with just the right amount of contrast, that area to be able to sit back and space properly? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm defining the form shadows, the whites, orange. I stopped by building up the value. The core shadow gets me to its correct value before transitioning into the reflected light, making adjustments to the cast shadow. In order for the form of this orange to look realistic, or values must be even and odd transitions, soft and subtle. Even values achieved through the application of multiple layers of graphite and the removal of spots of inconsistent values, they inevitably arise soft transitions, on the other hand, comparable and effective use of the white pencil and the right area derives its immediate value to bridge the gap between disparate tones. The last sheet with the right orange is lighter than just about everything else in the picture. With that in mind, must be measured with our value application. Most of the transition between light and shadow along the terminator will be carried out in my HB pencil to soften those edges. All the majority of the light shape, the line the edge. Then for my two h and forage pencils, beyond that, the whites of the paper will serve as the center lights in that area. Keep tweaking those edges and values too, you can feel are distinct sense of roundness. Imagine one of your hand across the form. How does it occur? Well, planes are facing towards or away from the lights. These are the kind of question that would accompany a keen observation of your reference, right? 11. Refining the forms Pt.3: Picking up right where we left off. I'm continuing to build up the shadow under I leave this particular section slightly lighter than values above it. Keep your eyes fixed as well on the sliver of lights beside the shadow, moving from darker to lighter, from top to bottom. Good. The value of the sponsor of the stock of the right orange is similar to that of the core shadow, with most of its edges soft and diffuse because of the intensity of the light around it. The planes on the right-hand side of the stock is facing more towards the light and it's considerably lighter, harder edges surrounding it. Over in this section at decided to start with the dog is Plains, establishing that as obese and great easing the values lighter towards the top and the bottom of the leaf. As light as this portion of the leaf appears when instead into, and he's still noticeably lighter than the local value of this part of the orange. For our values to synchronize harmoniously, comparisons of this nature must be recurrence through the entire drawing process. Not just for our values, but for our edges as well. At this juncture, most of our efforts we devoted to the background. Many, many layers. Deft use of our paintbrush and some tissue paper will help us in achieving a cohesive and unified background. Disjoint is more or less the sketch. So if you wanted to give you a join as it was prior, that's totally fine. To be honest. I think I prefer the background with the whites of the paper showing. If he had to grow as artists, we must learn to enjoy and appreciate the more monotonous aspects of creating a picture. Well, that's working on a background such as this. When engaging in a rigorous self boutique afterwards, it is only in those moments of discomfort. Let me strengthen our weaknesses, elevates our abilities. As we draw now to the end of this project, advise you to give it a day when you feel like you're done and come back with fresh eyes, devoid of the angst of whoring to the end in a fixed whatever calls your attention as a need of improvement. With that said, congratulations for making it this far. I've tried my best to make this class as informative as I could on my hope is that some of you who are able to increase your understanding and leave it a bit more motivation to try a little harder. I'd appreciate any feedback and how can make these classes better for you guys. But until then, take care and much love. 12. Review/Self Critique: What's up, guys bouba here in this video, I'm gonna be critiquing the drawing I made for this class. If you were to continue to grow in our ability to express ourselves and analysis of what we've done is essential. Not just what you've done wrong, but what you've done right will give you something to work towards in your next project, I'm going to take this self critiquing stages, beginning with the outline into the value blocking, and finally the finished drawing without further ado, let's get to it. Alright, so I have to draw and to the right to me. So if you're wondering why I'm looking down, that's why beginning with the outline, I was pretty satisfied overall with the outcome. I like the simplicity of the shapes, the paucity of detail, and the overall proportions. I feel like everything was relating well, what I disliked or could improve upon is the variety in the line weights. Everything is very similar. So having some thinner and thicker line, some harder and softer lines, lines that extend beyond the form, darken accents. Things like that I think would have made this stage of the drawing look a bit more interesting. There's an idea out there that you should aspire for your drawing to look attractive every step of the way. Now this isn't always possible, but the idea is striving for that ideal makes you a better artist. Moving on to the value blocking, I really liked the graphic qualities of the shapes. I feel like I have a good balance of C curves, S goes on streets. On the negative side, I feel like my core shadows in the oranges, but two dark and the edges too hard along those lines. If I made the core shadow darker, I could have indicated the rest of the form shadow and grouped all of the largest half-tones into one big value that we increasing the sense of roundness even at this preliminary stage, last but not least, onto the finished drawing. I feel like I capture the roundness of the form of the oranges pretty well. It's evidenced what the focal point is based on contrast and the level of rendering. You've also got a good balance of edges all around, which is something I'm very sensitive to because I have a tendency to make all images look the same on to what I don't like. Where to begin. First with the background, I'd like to do more with the whites of the paper showing and the vignette from dark to light. Also a few shapes in the drawing onto well-designed as you can see on the screen currently. So maybe going back and tweaking some of those now that I can see them, it's probably a good idea. Relative to my reference, the core shadow, the right oranges too dark. It's quite a bit lighter in the reference and something that I missed. Also, that section of the leaf is too dark. The bottom of the leaf of the rider oranges too low compared to the rest of the fruit. And lastly, my cast shadows are too dark relative to the form shadow. If you look at it closely, you can see there's more contrast in my drawing them there isn't a reference. Because of that, it draws attention away from the light shape, which is the focal points of the oranges. They probably a few more things that I can improve upon that I missed. But I think you'll get the points. This exercise is not about hazing ourselves or feeling like a loser because we don't draw like x artist. It really is all about improving upon where we're ads, especially if you're self-taught by applying yourself that this process of self-analysis, you will unconsciously hit upon new insights and ideas and overtime mastery or come to you. So acknowledged the winds, take the losses in your stride, and come back with renewed vigor and enthusiasm. Best of luck to you guys. Bye bye. 13. Preserving your drawing: Alright, with the drawing behind us, we're going to want to keep it in as Pristina condition as we can unless you hit the drawing, in which case you can just throw it out. But assuming you want to keep the drawing, we're going to be going over the tools you can use to make this happen. So the first step for me is usually cropping the paper with a paper cutter. This step is optional because it's not always necessary and in this case, it's not accidents. I get out my spirit fixative, which puts simply is a liquid containing an aerosol container that when sprayed on the paper, prevents smudging and yellowing. Some fixatives I workable, meaning you can still work on the paper with your pencil even after you've used it. While some others and unworkable, meaning should you use them? So you're completely done with the drawing. There are a bunch of different brands out there, so I encourage you to try them all and see what works for you. Cry alone and a Winsor and Newtons workable, fixative works great. The process is pretty simple. Ideally, you want to do this outdoors. If not, you can just open up your windows, leave Drawing Flats on a table, get out your fixative, shake it vigorously for about 15 seconds with your bottle parallel to the surface of your paper, keep the nozzle about 12 inches away from the surface of the paper. Spree all the way across the paper, going over the edges on both sides, first horizontally and then vertically. Do this in a single layer, give it a couple of minutes for the liquid to settle, then rinse and repeat. Depending on whether you're using graphite, charcoal pastel, usually two to five layers is good enough to get the job done. You can always just raise your hand on the surface of the paper a little bit. And if you see you aren't picking up any graphites in this case, then you know it's sufficiently fixed once you're done with that, leaves the joint in a well ventilated area for about half an hour. Beyond that point, you free to handle it, move it around a storage wherever you want to. It's a good practice as well. Once you're done with all of this, to get this prefix to bottle, turn it upside down, spray for a couple of seconds, and then clogged the nozzle that way when you're ready to use the next, it works well, hopefully you've got a portfolio or fully you can put the drawing in. And beyond that point, you get to go. Thanks for watching. Bye bye. 14. Class Project: What's up gets moved here. For this class project, you're gonna be taking it in two phases. The first comprising of a conceptual sphere. If you remember one of the geometric forms you during the warm up exercises, your goal for this phase of the project is to draw and shade a minimum of ten spheres from start to finish. In this conceptual sphere, a light source would be coming from the right-hand side, mimicking exactly the still-life drawing for this lesson, I pick the sphere because it's the most basic form underlying the shape while oranges. Thus through many iterations of drawing the sphere, you are developing muscle memory and ingraining the concepts covered in the warm-up exercises even deeper. Second phase of the project will be for you to go through the steps outlined in this lesson and complete a finished drawing from the reference photo provided and the projects and resources section equipped with a better understanding of how to render a spherical form. From phase one, your focus should be on creating well-designed shapes, Eclair movements of value from light to shadow, and a good amount of variety in the edges of your picture. I understand that the process of getting better at drawing is one of trial and error. So be kind to yourself if you find a success does not come immediately. I'm more than happy to answer any questions you might have about the projects. So feel free to drop a comment and Discussions tab if you need a bit of help and best of luck to you all, Bye bye.