General drawing: Lighting and shading

I’ve always been at least a little interested in anything artsy or creative. While I’m fairly skilled and familiar with anything musical, having played multiple instruments, and participated in two shows through Northwood and KR’s drama department, I’ve never put much time into drawing. My cousin took art lessons during her elementary school and middle school years. She had a natural talent and a passion for art. I was always impressed by even her doodles, but never took the initiative to improve my skill in this area, until now. I will be using Giovanni Civardi’s “Drawing A Complete Guide” in order to get at least a basic idea for all things drawing.

The first thing that struck me as very important was the light and shading in a drawing. Whether the drawing is color or achromatic tones (meaning tones that have no color), the contrast in light/shading can be incredibly useful. One of the most important things shading is used for is volume and depth. Value is light and shadow portrayed in the drawing, and chiaroscuro is the contrast between the two. These two ideas help create intuitive space. "Intuitive space an illusion created by the artist that tricks any viewer into seeing depth, volume and mass on a two dimensional surface" (Civardi 83). The first thing I decided to do in order to properly use intuitive space was to draw some basic objects, three dimensional objects like spheres, boxes and cones. Two important things to include were the object’s cast shadow and form shadow. A form shadow is the less defined dark side on an object that is not facing the light source. The cast shadow is the shadow created by the object, or the shadow the object casts (Civardi 89).  One also has to account for the small amount of reflected light, adding an unexpected lighter patch where the form shadow is. Minding the shadows and the different tones each part of the object had was very important when it came to finally drawing, since that really helps when you are creating the illusion of a three dimensional object. I started with drawing the lighter part of the circle, and then slowly transitioned into the darker parts. After this, I then increased the level of detail in the object and its shadow. My first attempt at a drawing was a sphere with proper shading and shadows.

 

The final product came out looking pretty good, but it took much longer than I initially thought it would. Even the slightest change in lighting is significant, ( Civardi 81) and getting the gradual change in shading was much more difficult, and often took me multiple tries to get it just right. Ultimately, the most important thing I learned was the level of concentration of focus that goes into drawings like these. Detail was incredibly important, but in the end the final result came out much better than I originally anticipated.

The question I have for you guys is what are some things or activities that require even the smallest amount of detail in order to be successful? How do you reach the level of detail needed?

Giovanni, Civardi. Drawing, A Completle Guide. N.p.: Search, 2006.