Transcripts
1. How to Use Light and Shadows in Your Art: Have you ever wonder what makes artworks more realistic than others? When we see some realistic art we might immediately think that, that is far from our capability, that artist is just too talented and there is no way that we can achieve that. Well, think again. The most important skill that you can develop if you want to draw realistically, is to understand how to place light and dark areas on the paper to replicate the world and to give the illusion of space. Hi I'm Alessia, and I'm here today to explore how light and objects interact with each other and how to translate that on paper. Art is my biggest passion, is a way of thinking. The very reason why I came to London eight years ago. No matter how abstracted or conceptual my work becomes, there's always a little space in my heart for drawing and painting in a realistic way. It is the way we usually start to make an art, and that's often thought as a challenge rather than a practice, skill, and observation. In this class, I'm going to take you step-by-step through the process of creating something realistically without the pressure of drawing in a very polished way. In fact, we're going to use a very sketchy style, something that anyone can achieve because this class is for absolute beginners. So if you have no experience of drawing or painting, this is the class for you. If you want to learn how to use the light on your paper, on your canvas to give that realistic and three-dimensional look. We're going to break this down from their observation of reality all the way to the final work, whether it's drawing or painting or digital art. We're going to do that by applying a method that I call observe, shape, and value. It is as simple as it sound. You observe an image, you jot down some shapes, and then at the end you add some values, or in other words, lighter and darker parts to make it three-dimensional. If you want to draw something with realistic shadows and composition, this is the class for you.
2. Class Overview + FREE EBOOK: Welcome to this class by using light and shadows in your artwork. In this section, I want to take you through the structure of the class and what do we need to successfully get to the end of it. With this class, you get a free eBook that contains most of the information in this class. But I made sure I kept it short enough to be printed and taking with you anyway. I included the lots of examples and images to make sure that everything is clear and actionable. To download it, just go to the Resources section below and click on the file named "Free eBook". Before we start, I want to point out a few things that we're going to see in the next lessons. First of all, the only materials that you really going to need are the one that you would normally use to create your art. Because this class is about a method rather than final outcome. In other words, how to do something regardless of what you're using. In my lessons and demonstration, I'll use a variety of formats to communicate ideas and to give you practical examples. I'll use pencil, paper, paint, and an iPad Pro to make everything easily accessible to everyone. I want to say that just because you see me using those, it doesn't mean that you have to do the same as well. Feel free to use anything that is available to you or that you enjoy the most. Now, let's have a look at the structure of the class. We can divide this in two parts. The first part, we'll have a chat to going through some definitions and some examples necessary to successfully execute the class project. These things are mostly around light and how it works, and how to break it down. Things that are useful in our art creation, from light and shadows to definitions such as values, form shadows, cast shadows and so on. Then I'll take you through the method that I called observe, shape, and value. We use this method to create step-by-step, and this is super important if you want to get your basics right before even starting adding any pigment or shapes or colors in your art. In the second part of the class, I'll demonstrate how you can apply all this method to any medium. I'll show you how I use it with pencil and paper drawing a still life from a picture, and then we use the same step-by-step approach with gouache painting and then digital art as well. I use Procreate on an iPad Pro. I highly recommend watching all this demonstration from start to finish because they're really packed with tips and tricks to get your art more realistic and having correct proportions and shadows since the beginning. In the next lesson, we'll talk about your class project.
3. Your Class Project: For your class project, I'd like you to create an artwork from a reference image of your choice. Feel free to take inspiration from my demonstrations, and I'll link all the images that I've used in the Resources below. I usually download them from the free website called unsplash.com. It's a royalty free image database, so you can use any of those pictures for art purposes. An easy class projects from beginners is a Still Life, and so you can create them by putting together everyday objects such as fruit, cups, pots, anything that you can find around the house. Remember to post your class project in the community down below so that you can get some feedback from me as well as from other students. Don't be shy, everyone is here to learn and no one is judging you or your skills. Constructive feedback is the easiest and fastest way to grow as an artist. Apply all the skills and tips that you've learned in this class, share it with your peers and keep practicing. Don't forget to have fun in the process.
4. How Light Shapes The World: I want to start this class by taking you to a little trip in our everyday life. I want you to try and remember, what is the first thing that you do when you get into a room? But the answer is probably that you turn the light on, and that's a very simple reason for that is because otherwise we wouldn't see anything. It's the same thing with art. If you want to see something in a painting or a drawing, you need to have a light source. That light source is going to have a position, an inclination, a color also called temperature. All of these factor have an impact on how that particular scene looks. You can change the light and you can change the scene. Changing the light can change the mood, the way things look. If they look bigger or smaller, you can manipulate the light to do that. In the same way, you can manipulate the light in your drawings or in your painting to get the effect that you want. Every object is made of a certain material or texture. Remember that when I say object, I can also mean a subject like a person, if you're doing a portrait or you're sketching an everyday scene where there's people in it. Anything that is including in that adds a texture and that is going to react with the light in a different way. How we perceive this feature is based on the light that sit in that object. Really simple example of that is clouds. Clouds can be white, can be gray, but also can turn pink when there is sunset and they become completely or almost invisible at night. Why am I telling you all this? This is very obvious, we all know that. Because if you want to draw realistic portraits, landscapes, still life, whatever you want to do, you need to know a few things relating light and shadows. You can have different scenarios where the light is very strong and direct. A lamp next to a coffee cup is going to create some shadows, reflection, some beautiful changes of terms. All of these in art takes also specific names that can be a little bit overwhelming. That's why I want to start this by observing and breaking down why we call things like that.
5. Light, Shadows, and Other Definitions: Well, first of all, we can talk about light in a few scenarios. The first one is direct light, the second is diffuse light, and the third is reflected light. With direct light, you have a direct light that is hitting an object, for example, desk lamp hitting your book. That's a direct light. Usually a direct light creates a strong contrast and a strong highlight. What I mean by highlight is the lightest part of a picture or an image or a scene. For example, if you look at this pot, this is the highlight, is the lightest part. This material is reflecting light in a certain way. This material here is a little different from this. This is smoother, is more reflective. This is more coarse and opaque and doesn't let the light through at all. It doesn't reflect at all, it absorbs it. Direct light like this usually creates a really strong contrast. We're going to have a very light part in this, and here in the back where you can't see right now is going to be darker because the light cannot go through and create a shadow. But the way they create a shadow is at an angle that is specific. The light is coming from in front of me a little bit on the right. This shadow is going to be in this direction. We're going to have a shadow that is on the vase, on the pot, and a shadow that is going to be on my desk. That shadow there is going to be on the pot is also called form shadow; is the shadow that is on the object and is usually generated by the shape of the object blocking the light from going through. A cast shadow is usually a shadow that is projected onto something else. If there were to be a cup in front of me, the cast shadow in this direction, in this case, would be the one on the table. As an angle and it fades away, they could be also very strong. We have highlights, we have a form shadow, we have a cast shadow, we have reflections. All of these need to be taken into account when we want to draw something.
6. Reflective Surfaces You Didn't Know About: I want to say a few words about reflection and reflective surfaces. When we think about reflection, we think about a mirror or a glass window reflecting the sunlight, everything that's really shiny, but that's not always the case. When we talk about direct light, we said that there's a light that's hitting an object. When we talk about direct light and reflected light, I like to make the analogy of the sun and the moon. You have the sun that creates the light is hitting the object directly. That's my direct light. The light is created that, my lamp is creating that light. On the other hand, when we have reflected light, is like thinking about the moon. The moon emits light at night, but that's reflected light. The sun is shining on the moon even though we can't see it, and the moon is reflecting the light on the Earth. In the same way we have reflected light on objects. That can seem like is shining light of its own, but it's not. It's important to be aware of that because of how the light can react and it can be confusing. You might think the light is coming from one side and actually that's just the reflection. We're going to go through that during our demonstration. Another thing that is often forgotten is that even opaque, solid surfaces, such a table or a wall, they do have reflective properties. In fact, if you shine the light on this wall, this wall in some way is going to reflect the light on the rest of the room. In the same way, if I have something like some paper on the table, the table is going to reflect some of the light onto the paper. The table is usually absorbing the light because it's not completely reflective, but some of that is going to be reflected onto the paper. It's good to know that because sometimes surfaces reflect, gets some colors in it that we don't know where they're coming from, and they're actually coming from a reflection. For example, if I put now this folder, which is not particularly reflective. If I put this here, the light is going to hit the file and it's going to bounce on the paper in a almost imperceptible way. But when we observe the shadow or the form shadow on the paper, we're going to see some hints of pink. That's where the pink is coming from. When let's say you have a bowl, I'm sure you've seen some demonstrations of light and shade with a sphere. We're going to see that there's a highlight on the sphere, but there's a little lighter part on the bottom. Sometimes we can't quite explain that. That's usually the reflection from the table, the surface.
7. Values & Value Grouping: Every book, our class tutorial that talk about light and shadow is going to talk about value, but what is value? Value is how light or dark something is. As simple as that. There is a range between this. You can break this down into a chart from the lightest part to the darkest part. You don't have to recreate a value shot, you can try and do it to have an idea of how values can really vary in the image and we can use that for value grouping. Value grouping is breaking down an image into a set number of values. Let's say you create the value chart of three shades. The first one maybe is white, the second is gray, the third is black. If we want to create a value grouping of two colors, we're going to include just the grays and the blacks. We not going to go in-between. It's almost like color-the-number exercise, but with values. You can include as many or as little as you want, it's something useful to do, usually before painting or before applying color because it's going to give us some guide on how dark or light go with the color, how to change the shade, the saturation of the color, all of that.
8. The Method: Observe, Shape, Value: So far, we've been talking about highlights, shadows, cast shadows, reflection. Values, which is how dark or light anything is. We also mentioned value grouping, which is grouping some values, similar values together to break down an image and make it easier to draw on it or paint on it, make it more believable. Now we're going to talk about the method that I called observe, shape, and value. You cannot color at the end if your artwork is in colors. We're going to see how this method can really help us to draw something from reality or from a picture. In other words, how to make a picture believable, giving illusional space, or depth, or volumes. The first step of this method is to observe the image or the scene in front of us. One of the first things that we want to look at is the light, also called light source, where the light is coming from. During this space, we also have room to really have a look at what the image is made from, what textures and colors. If there's a lot of contrast in the image, or their shades are very soft, all of these things can be observed in this space. One of the main things that I like to have a look at is the cast shadows because that is going to give you an indication of where the light is coming from, and that's something you're going to have to pay attention when you put the shadows in because it's going to give that object that volume, and it's going to make it look real. One other thing that is not related to values is, to identify what I call the star of the picture. What I mean by that is, to identify this one element that you think is the main element in the picture, the main element that captures the attention and gives a soul to the painting or drawing. There is no right or wrong answer in that, you decide what that is, and also keep in mind that you can take away or add any elements that you want. Step 2 is to define the main shapes of the drawing. This is going to depend also what medium you're going to use in the end. We're going to explore that with many examples, so to finish, I'm going to explain how to use it in still life painting and digital art. If you're painting with oil or paint, maybe you do the shape with a shade of brown or yellow as an undertone, as a background for your painting, or maybe you just sketching using the same pencil, so you don't need any other tool. What I like to do in the shapes is to break down the main elements with really, really simple, really simplified geometric forms. I'll give you an example. If I want to draw these dirty old and painted scissors, this might look like a complex shape. In this case, I will break it down with a few geometric shapes. For example, for this part, I will use a mix of a rectangle and a triangle because it has a point. For instance, if it would be like that, there would be a clear triangle here and some rectangular shapes, some ovals. Overall, you can break down the image into little pieces, and then you put everything together with details. This is quite simple to do and it helps you to keep the main proportions in check, because if you wouldn't do that, if you would focus, for example, on this first, you really go into details. You do every single shapes that you see, every curve. When it comes to draw this, you're going to find it difficult to keep the same proportions, because details distract us from the main proportions. Do the shapes first, and then you go over the lines and keep adjusting, keep observing and putting the lines down. When we're going to do a digital sketch with Procreate, we can use the grid as a guide, and I've already made a class about that, you can always have that as a reference. In very simple terms, you use a grid that you draw on it, or in this case, it's ready there for you to use because it's digital. You compare the shape of the squares in the grid in relation to the image, and so it makes it easier to get the shape right and in proportion because you'll always double check with the shape of the square. The third step is the value. We're going to start to add some value, what it means is, I start with some shadows, I usually like to start with the darkest one, but I don't always. If the contrast is very clear to me, I like to make that clear because it helps that image really pop out and it give me an indication of what it's going to look like in the end, or what tricks I need to make, to make him look real, and depending on what we're using, whether is a pencil or paint, we can use that to make something darker or lighter, and give the volume to our image.
9. Pencil on Paper - Observe: Let's start this demo with probably the most straightforward medium, pencil on paper. I chose a still life because it's something easy to put together and a great example of how objects can interact with light. We'll identify the light direction, the highlights and the shadows, but all you need for now is pencil and some paper. I will use charcoal as well, but you don't have to. Let's start with some observations. Highlights are very obvious in this picture, so I'd like to point them out for future reference. The light direction can be tricky when dealing with reflective surfaces, so always make sure to double-check with the cast shadows to make sure you get the whole picture right. Shadows are another easy way of breaking down a picture, and then reflections and materials can help us later on choosing how to approach the values phase. Now that we looked at the main elements such as light, reflections and shadows, let's get started with some drawing.
10. Pencil on Paper - Shape: In this next part, we'll start putting down some simple shapes, and then we add some details. But first, I'd like to start defining my space almost like a picture frame. It gives me some boundaries and it's easier to see proportions in an enclosed space. I think that the secret to a prep sketch is to be quick and light with your mock. Drawing simple shapes that resemble geometric shapes in particular, is a great start because it doesn't need perfectionism or details, but we're just placing the objects in space for now. When I'm happy with this, I'll start defining the objects a little better. To recap, a picture frame makes proportions easier, and geometric shapes takes away the pressure of perfectionism without impacting our overall drawing. Remember to use a light pressure so that you can change things later if you want to. In the next lesson, we're going to add some values, making our drawing more realistic.
11. Pencil on Paper - Value: In this lesson, we'll add some pigment to make everything more real. We can start with some shadows and then we keep adjusting the shape and the shadow together, adding details in the meanwhile. Let's start with the main shadows on the jar. We don't have to block out these completely, we can just suggest them with a few stroke. In this phase, I would like to keep looking at the picture and fix some of the shapes as well. When I feel good about it, I will start adding some darker areas. I'm using charcoal sticks because they are very dark and I don't have to press on the paper as much as I would with a pencil. But we can still switch between those two to define darker and lighter values in our scale of grays and blacks. We can also use the finger to blend things, although it's going to be a bit messy and the result is not always natural, I rather use my pressure and mark mickey to adjust the shape. A few small details with my pencil and my still life is ready. To recap, to add some value, start with some shadows, keep adjusting the shapes and fill dark shadows to make sure you have the right contrast in the picture. You can see that applying this method would still live using a pencil is very simple. We follow step-by-step from observing the main elements to shaping using geometric shapes and finally, by adding some shadows. Keep fixing the shapes until you're happy with the composition and the overall tone of the picture and don't be afraid to add your touch to your drawings, it will make them special and unique.
12. Painting - Observe: Now, we're going to apply the same method to gouache paint. I chose a landscape because I find the shadows and tone very interesting, and of course you don't have to use the same subjects. In this lesson, I'll use [inaudible] dash palette of gouache paint and a watercolor sheet of paper. We'll also have a light pencil to sketch the shapes later on. For now, we start by observing as we've done in the other demo. The light source in here is the sun, and it's very visible in front of us. It's interesting to observe the direction of the cast shadows created by these trees, highlighting the main dark areas in [inaudible] here. Later on we'll need to use some colors on top of values because this is a painting. It's good to identify at least three main shades of color that you will need. Looking at the shadows now, the one in the bushes on the right-hand side, for example, is one of the darkest. Finally, I'm marking sunlight areas on the grass and the leaves with some yellow. Make sure you know where the light is coming from. Take note of the cast shadow's direction and identify all the shades of dark and light areas. In the next lesson, we're going to draw the main shapes.
13. Painting - Shape: In this lesson, we start drawing the main shapes to have scale and proportion of the trees. I like to start with a picture in frame, simple rectangle that encloses my painting so that I know how big my trees should be compared to the frame. You don't have to be precise at this stage, just make sure you choose the right size for the kind of painting you want to have at the end. You can go as big or as small as you wish. Just keep in mind how much paint you're going to need and also how much time you have. I'm doing a small one here to show you how easy it can be to get a painting done in just a few minutes a day. To draw the trees, keep a like mark a very basic sketch. It's probably useful to think about these trees as candy floss. They have very long sticks and fluffy tops. Don't try and define every branch of the tree or every leaf. Stick to quick outline and scale of what you see in the picture. Be quick with your sketch. You will adjust everything later on with the painting. To draw the main shapes, make sure you limit your space for easy proportions. Use light pressure on the paper and associate the trees with candy floss. In the next lesson, we will add some value.
14. Painting - Value: In this lesson, we will add some value by using our pencil, and then we'll use some paint as well. Let's start by adding the main cast shadows next to the trees. As we observed before, they're coming at an angle toward us. If you remember, the sun is up there behind the trees, back in the trees in a sense, is what we see in front of us. We go over the darkest spots of the pictures without pressing too much or being too precise because we will add a layer of paint on top. Here, I'm aiming to have a balance of light and darks, as if I'm trying to see the picture with black and white glasses. The next thing I'll do here is choosing a black color similar to the one in the picture. I'll use some green and gray to define the darkest areas and you could do this later, but I find that with some dark tones right now helps me achieve the right amount of contrast. How much or a little contrast you have is up to you. Enough to draw the picture there that just as a reference, you don't have to follow strict rules. Get some values on the trees as well, and prepare your paints for the next lesson. Adding some value in a painting starts with the sketch of the main shadows, then some pencil blocking, and then some dark paint of the same range as the picture one, in this case, of the grain. In the next lesson, we'll have some fun with other colors and we will add more details.
15. Painting - Colour: Part 1: In this lesson, we are completing our painting by putting the main colors, creating some depth and adding lighter and darker tones. Let's start with the block color. I chose the green of the grass as my main starting point. You can add different shade later. But for now, you want to keep it simple. I'm filling the empty spaces in between the shadows, because they're very similar in shade when I'm looking at the reference picture. Then I try to mix a darker green for the leaves. The trees have different greens on them, more than one of course because they're hit by the sun in different ways. To complete the basic colors, I mix some blue and some white to start blocking out the sky. I personally love painting the sky, and I don't mind being bold with my colors here. I enjoy mixing them on paper as well as on my palette. I'm mainly mixing wet-on-wet, meaning that I don't wait for the paint to dry before adding some color on top. In this way, you get some interesting variation of color rather than a flat and sometimes boring tint.
16. Painting - Colour: Part 2: This is starting to look like a proper artwork now. I decided that I was ready to add some really dark shades. I used some black, some dark green to go with the darkest areas of the shadows under the trees or the bushes in the background. Remember that you can use color as well as your propulsion to suggest depth. In general, try to be quick with your strokes, especially if you want to mix on the paper because squash a little bit like acrylics dries very quickly. Layering is different from mixing wet on wet. You should find your favorite way of working and keep observing, shaping, and adding some color to suggest the illusion of space. Bear in mind that the side of the trees that we're seeing right now is opposite the sun. So they're going to look almost black because of the contrast and because they're not hit by the sunlight directly. On the other end, the leaves are arranged in different positions and they cast the shadow on top of each other in a unpredictable way. Feel free to add some of your touch to those strokes.
17. Painting - Colour: Part 3: When I'm almost finished, I'm also adjusting the colors of the grass giving it a different tone depending on the position compared to the light. After a few final touches with my own style, I can finish my painting. To sum up this lesson, start with basic colors, use a few shades of green, go over the darkest shadows, and remember to paint freely and enjoy the process. In general, the method works in the same way. Observe, shape, and add some values and colors, and then repeat until you have the final painting.
18. Digital Art Demo - Observe: In this next few lessons, we're going to look at the method applied to digital art. In this case, we're going to draw a cupcake using iPad Pro and Procreate. If you don't have any knowledge of that, I would highly recommend that you go and check my previous class on how to use Procreate and a grid method to get accurate proportions. In this lesson, we're going to start with the observation of this image, the light source, the highlights, the shadows, and texture. We're ready for the next steps. For now, let's get started with observing. The first thing that I want to know is where the light is coming from. In this case, it's coming from the top right corner, and although we don't know exactly where the source is, we can see the highlights and a cast shadow on the opposite side. Then I start to have a look at the highlights on the cupcake, on the pieces of chocolate, on the glass, and on the reflective elements in the background. One thing to notice is how the elements of the cupcake cast a shadow on top of each other so those pieces of chocolate are casting a shadow on the icing. I want to make sure that I get all the cast shadows in the right place, in the creases of the cupcake on the table, and then I have a good look at the elements of the picture in terms of texture. We have paper, we have the cake, we have the chocolate, we have the glass. All these different elements react differently with light. We want to keep this in mind where we're going to put the color, but also where we're going to put the values to give us an idea. In this lesson, we looked at the light source direction, the highlights, the cast shadows, the textures and the reflection. In the next one we're going to step up and go to our shapes. As I said, we're going to use a grid.
19. Digital Art Demo - Shape: In this lesson, we're going to focus on jotting down the main shapes, starting with the frame for our workspace. We're going to have simple line drawings following the grid and its proportions in relation to the image. It's very simple. It's all explained in my previous class. Let's start with the picture frame. When I draw, I like to limit my space so that it's easier to have an idea of the scale that I'm using. I suggest to always get started with very simple shapes, such as ovals, diagonal lines, and so on. Don't be afraid of making mistakes because we can always use layers to delete or to make the drawing more transparent later on. Adding some major shapes like the icing and some bits on top will give us an idea of where the major values are going to be. Once we frame the image, we've drawn the main proportions, that elements, we can carry on with our next lesson where we'll add the values and highlights before starting with the color.
20. Digital Art Demo - Value: In this lesson, we're going to start to draw on the shapes that we made, making some really bold marks and blocking out some parts with our pencil, even though it's a digital pencil. We can add shadows, we can add light. All of the things that we talked about during our lessons, they are known as values. I usually start with the main shadows and I really recommend you start with that, because it's usually the fastest thing to know this. As we said before, it's very easy to understand where the light is coming from if you're observing the shape and the angle of the cast shadows. I always like to start with that. Sometimes it happen to be one of the darkest shadows, and that could be another way of starting your work. I would suggest starting with very loose marks. One simple trick that I have when you're working on digital, but also when you're working with pencil really, is if you can, to have a background that is not white. Use a page or a background color for your layers that is not completely white because it's going to make your whites pop. Every single color is that it's going to pop away more if its on a neutral color such as gray or beige, something really turned down, but that makes a difference when you compare it to white. In this phase, I always like to go over the lines as well, because although we did that when we were doing the shapes, I still want to make sure that the balance between the lines and the color that I'm adding, even though right now it's just black and white, this balance between values and lines, is what is going to give that illusion of space, that three-dimensional space on paper. Adding as many details as you can and be free with your mark making. Don't be afraid of making mistakes. I felt sometimes some of the students tell me that I'm a bit fast during my lessons, and the reason I am fast is not because I'm particularly confident that the mark that I'm going to make is exactly what I want, but because when you try to be fast and decisive with your marks, the result is going to be way more expressive, and you're going to be surprised to see what comes out of our mark making. Remember, you're in digital surface right now, so if you do something wrong, you can either delete it or, as you know, I'm not a big fan of erasers, it you don't want to do that, you can always make the layer more transparent later on. But in here, as you can see, I'm keeping that balance between white and dark. I'm adding some highlights, even on the smaller elements, such as the chocolate and the reflection of the glass. For this lesson, we used our black and white tones to give a sense of highlights, shadows, and we used the background color, to make our colors and whites more bright. In the next lesson, we're going to add some colors. We're going to start with a black color and carry on to the different shades, and include as many elements as we want.
21. Digital Art Demo - Colour: In this lesson, we're going to start to go over with some color and make this more realistic. We're going to add few block colors first and then some shades and the background. We're going to have a look at some tricks on how to make everything seem more realistic. But let's start with the block color. By block color, I mean just picking one color and just going over a surface completely. It doesn't matter if it's darker or lighter in the image, you just get one main color and you cover the surface. Later on, you start adding some shadows in terms of color, so you're not going to use just black and white anymore, but you're going to use also some shades of brown, in this case, some red. You're going to really have a look at your image. Some of the tricks that can be used in digital is to pick the color from the image. I've explained out to do that in my previous class on Procreate. But if you don't want to do that, you can try and match the color and maybe make a little note of the color next to the cupcake to see how they compare when they're together. Then add some grays to try and mimic the reflections in a way. But remember that this is not going to be very clear until you have the whole image together. For this painting in particular, I didn't choose a very hyper-realistic style. If you've seen my classes, I rarely do that. I really like to be free with my pencil and do what I want really, and add as many or as little information as I want on the paper. But what I do like to do is to have that popping effect of something coming out of the space. As you can see here with this grayish background, it's a gray blue background, you can see that cupcake really coming out of the screen and is starting to look like something that we can recognize. This is one of the aims when we're talking about value and light. One of the thing that we do is covering the background, trying to match a little bit the one in the picture. That's a reason why we do that. I have a simple trick to make the background blend better, and it's literally to blend with the Blend tool. It's going to make the background blurry. The fact that the background is blurry and the cupcake is not blurry, it's going to give to the human eye that sense of depth. You're going to see the background as something that is really far from you and the cupcake is very close to you, and that's the element that is attracting your attention. A blurry and then adjust a few things. I'll go over with some really dark contrasts such as a dark area, like black areas. Remember that you can always include or take away any elements that you want in the picture. In this case, I decided to keep the glass element, but you can take it out and just do the cupcake. To sum up this lesson, we have the methods explaining digital art, we observed as we do with everything else, and then we shape, value and color using also the help of layers and how to tweak color and background with digital mediums. I hope you enjoyed this bar, and I can't wait to see what you do with your iPad and Apple Pencil.
22. Final Thoughts Skillshare Finished: We're now at the end of this class. If you follow from the beginning to the end, you will now have to draw something with the method, observe, shape, and value, and give that illusion of volume and depth in your drawings to make it more realistic. You can apply that on anything from drawing a still life with just the pencil to other very complex painting with oil paint or something digital that you build in layers. If you enjoyed this class, I would love for you to leave a review, what you think about it and don't forget to post your project in the gallery so you can have my feedback and other people's feedback, which usually helps you to grow more than anything. Just remember to be constructive with your criticism and just to understand that some people learn at different speeds than others. But any comment that can really help others grow is really appreciated. From this point now, if you want to carry on with your art, you can check out my other classes and you can follow me on Instagram and on YouTube where I show my life in the studio, I make some speed paintings and I give tips, and discuss art and art theory as well. Thank you so much for taking this class. I hope you enjoyed it and I'll see you in the next one. Bye bye.
