Week 11: Value Range and Shading

Being a big part of drawing, I had studied shading and value before. Even so, I was not familiar with terms such as core shadow and terminator, but with simpler, common sense principles such as “the part facing the light is brighter” and “the shadow the object leaves on the ground is darker near said object”. Otherwise, I drew from observing the object and reproducing what I saw without knowing any technical terms. Though, looking back, knowing some theory is better than doing things blindly. 

That being said, for this task I first experimented with composition by drawing some preparatory sketches before deciding on the final one:

After some feedback I ended up with the third one. The first was quite boring because of having  too many small horizontal objects.Plus, the perspective on the skull wasn’t quite working, having overcomplicated myself yet again. The second was better in terms of perspective on the skull, and seemed a bit more interesting than the first one, maybe because of the slight 3 point perspective. Still, the third one that I put together after the feedback was best, because of the cylinder that breaks the horizontality. I also took out the skull since I decided keeping things simple for the moment  was best. 

I ended up with this composition, and turned the photo to grayscale so I could see the values better:

I first sketched the objects, paying attention to symmetry and ellipses. I think, in terms of composition, I could have done a better job, since I find the repeating pattern of the rocks a bit boring, though it is slightly softened by the shell that was more interesting than the rocks.

Then started marking and shading the darkest shadows on the objects:

For the other objects it was easy to find it, but for the cylinder, being transparent and made of plastic and so, having reflections, made it a bit harder. 

I then added gray tones going toward the highlight and darkened the shadows where it was the case:

I added details and shaded the background. This is the final work:

I really like how the key and cylinder turned out (especially the torn tape detail and the reflexions on the plastic), but the shading for the ground could have been cleaner. And, as I mentioned already, composition wise I could have done better.