Sketching Curly Hair

When it comes to sketching curly hair most people dread it. Often people see them as hard to do and hard to get the look they want with them. But according to Charlie Bowater "if you understand how they work, it is a lot easier" (71).  To understand how they work you need to know how to draw them. First I started off with two vertical lines and added a wavy line down the middle. Now depending on how far apart and long you draw the lines will affect the width and length of your curl.  Also when doing this step make sure that the lines you draw are light because those lines are like the guidelines for sketching the curls. Then draw another wavy line a little below the other one.  After that connect the open parts and lastly, remove the guidelines and add detail.  Now when drawing curls variety is key. A tip from Bowater is "look at the hair and how it behaves, simplify, and then draw" (71). Using that tip you are going to have to change the width of your curls, make them slimmer or thicker, split and pull the curl together so the curls look more lively and bouncy as well as you get variety with the curls. As well as you will get a better understanding of how they work and how to add detail to your curls.

Finally when drawing a curly hairstyle, make the curls look natural when drawing the guidelines give it some flow and direction. Then draw the curls.

Bowater suggests that using this technique you can layer the curls one after the other (71). I have tried layering the curls using this technique but it is a little time consuming, though it does give you a better results then what I have tried before.
What techniques help you draw curly hair and do you often dread drawing curly hair? 
Bowater, Charlie. Beginner's Guide to Sketching: Characters, Creatures & Concepts. 3DTotal Publishing, 2015.

Shading Techniques

Shading is an essential part of sketching.  As Bowater states "Shading techniques are very important and prevent your sketches from looking flat" (31).  Which is quite true because the contrast from the dark and the light help your sketches look more realistic and natural. The simplest shading technique are regular and hatching lines. When using this method the line should be parallel and all you do it move your tool left to right or up and down. This technique is the commonly used and can be used on almost every type of drawing says Bowater (31).  You can often see this technique when shading in skin, values, backgrounds, and etc. I have shown this style by drawing a circle and and using this technique to fill in. You can see how it adds a little more dimension to a simple circle.

  The next technique I will be talking about is cross- hatching. It is very similar to regular/hatching lines except you layer the lines on top of each other. In Bowater's words " cross-hatching involves one set of lines crossing over another set, creating volume" (32). Which is the simplest way to define this technique and give sense of of how to do. As you can see I started with another circle and I first did the basic hatching lines (which is the technique mentioned up) then I made another set of lines perpendicular to create the cross- hatching effect. Bowater suggests finding an angle that seems natural and work consistently  when cross- hatching (32).  I believe this is important because when the strokes feel more natural it is easier to shade in your sketches and have a better overall result.

Finally the last technique I would like to cover is circular shading. This technique uses the overlapping of a circular pattern and is very similar to when we scribble/fill in objects except this has the presence of a circular pattern. This is a great way to give more of a solid appearance as well as blend different colors in when sketching in color. You can see that I did this in another circle as I have been doing in my previous examples and you can notice that when you use circular shading you can find see some of the circular pattern mentioned above.

Now these are only 3 shading techniques, there are several other shading techniques and all have a different ways of enhancing your sketches and bringing them to life.

Do you think when shading you should find an angle that feels natural and not just in cross- hatching but any type of shading technique?And why?
 Bowater, Charlie. Beginner's Guide to Sketching: Characters, Creatures & Concepts. 3DTotal Publishing, 2015.

Learning The Basic Fundamentals of Sketching: Using Basic Shapes

Ever since we are little, we learn how to draw; though it may not be the best we still draw and sketch. Sketching and drawing are some of the ways we show our creativity. Using my creativity, I have decided to learn how to sketch. With sketching there are a few fundamentals that play a role in order to create various types of drawings. Most of those fundamentals have to do with shading. As Charlie Bowater in the Beginner's Guide to Sketching says " Light patterns, such as objects having light and shadowed areas, help when creating the illusion of depth on paper. Since you have your pencil in your hand, you can decide what other people see" (19).  When working with basic shapes and learning light patterns and shadowed areas have a big impact on how your sketch will turn out. With your creativity you can chose with what you would like people to see. I will take you through some of the fundamentals of shading using the basic shapes. First I drew a circle, oval, and square.

 Starting with basic shapes helps because you can make many variations and combinations. With these basic shapes you can elevate them into a sphere, cube and cone. When sketching Bowater recommends not use to much pressure (18).  Sometimes we have a tendency of putting a lot of pressure while we are trying to draw something out which can become hard to fix if you make a mistake while drawing.

Now as you can see in the pictures above I started with minimal pressure until I was done with sketching out my shapes and was pleased with my final shapes. From there start the basic fundamentals of shading. From the step above I went on to shade in my shapes. But before I shade I had to chose where I would want to highlight. Now highlighting is where the light hits your shape and those areas are the brightest. Once that decision was clear I started to shade in my shapes while making sure the areas I want the light to hit are brighter/lighter than the rest of my shape. With that came cast shadows. Because once you are done highlight/shading you want to know where the shadow of you object would lay. Cast shadows is an important feature because it can help make you object look as if it were actually placed on top of something and give it more of a 3-dimensional shape. I would recommend when you do this step to sketch out how you would like your shadow then shade it in. As Bowater states "the further a cast shadows is from the object which it casts it, the lighter and less defined the edges look" (19).  Using what Bowater said helps make that shadow of your shapes look more like a shadow than a mirror image.  The last fundamental is reflecting light. It is similar to highlighting and closely related. With reflecting light you take the the areas you would like to highlight and lighten it up making it seem more natural.

As you can see you can take an eraser and erase the small areas where the light reflects the most. You only want to erase small areas because the area around it have to gradually get darker making it so the light is focused on a specific area. Now with that said you can also erase edges as well were the light reflects as I did to the cube.

Using all those fundamentals that was my product.

 Do you agree with Bowater that you can make people see what you want them to see using shading techniques?

 Bowater, Charlie. Beginner's Guide to Sketching: Characters, Creatures & Concepts. 3DTotal Publishing, 2015.

The Torso

The final piece of the series before I finally draw the whole body: the torso. The base of the body, where everything comes back to. Though not the most acknowledged region of the body, it's the most vital one.

Torsos are perhaps the most diverse region of the body among humans, coming in all shapes, sizes, and variations. The general torso for a male is built and muscular, yet not overly buff, and the general torso for a female is slim but curvy. Though these are not the builds most typical people possess, they're most commonly seen in drawings, which is what I'll be using.

I'll be drawing both a female torso, from the shoulders to the pelvis. The main reason I'm drawing a female torso is because the end product, a whole-body sketch, will be of a female, as I just personally find females easier to draw.

Here I'm just starting with a basic outline, specifically the shoulders and general torso area, as well as marking out where the chest ends in order to accurately shade it. Bridgman explains how "the masses of the torse are the chest, the abdomen or pelvis, and between them the epigastrium" (Bridgman 111). These are the three areas that will be concentrated on in the drawing!

I didn't use construction lines in this drawing, as I was rather scatterbrained and just started sketching from the photo. However, if I were to redo this drawing, I'd most definitely try to use construction lines, as I'm sure it would've given me and easier time proportioning the torso.

I added some slight alterations, but you can clearly see how this looks more realistic than just leaving lines on it. The drawing seems simple, but when just sketching (especially when you're learning how to sketch something), Bridgman strongly recommends that it's best to not overcomplicate it, and to gain a strong understanding of the basics before proceeding to add the microscopic details (Bridgman 65).

I didn't pay too much attention to the arms since that isn't our focus, and just tried to get the arms to look vaguely proportional to the torso. Another important tip is that the elbow generally will line up with the belly button, which will be helpful in my next blog post!

Have you ever had a situation where you overcomplicated something? Is it better to start out in slow steps or just dive right in?

Bridgman, George. Constructive Anatomy. New York: Sterling Publishing Co., 2016. Print.

Gerbera Daisy

This is a new angle and much more detail to my last post (Shaded Daisy). This drawing used a lot of layers and overlapping. Both helped to achieve a unique perspective. For this drawing Holmes needed us to understand "how to create the illusion of layers so that parts of the drawing appear to be in front of or behind other parts"(64).

The process started with a small oval and florets I'm the middle. The book then instructed to add petals of different lengths and then added layers. This part was difficult because I felt the petals were not in proportion with the eye of the flower. They seemed either too small or too big or stubby in an ugly way. But I moved on to shading. Holmes instructed that the closer the petal is to the eye, the darker the shading should be (65). I finally added the stem to finish it off.

I was unhappy with the final piece. My obvious mistake was making my seed/oval too wide and not fixing it from the beginning. But one can always learn from their mistakes. I also don't feel my shading was very good. Both of those took away the realistic look and the illusion of it being 3D. What would you have done differently? What changes would you make in terms of shading? 

Facial Features

Perhaps the most complex human body part to draw, and my personal weakness: the face. Some unknown aspect about the face makes it extremely difficult for me to draw, and all my faces end up looking unrealistically cartoon-like, unproportional, and 2-dimensional. I aspire to create faces that are realistic and can convey some kind of emotion or feeling to the viewer.

As usual, my medium of usage will be pencil, as it is, to me, the easiest medium to use. For novice artists, it provides good control, and you don't have to worry about selecting the appropriate colors and shades, but only focusing on the values used. Also, pencil is easily erasable, which is a feature I'm certain I'll be using quite thoroughly in this particular drawing. As Bridgman states in his book, when first sketching something that a person is uncertain or uncomfortable with, it's best to pick the medium they're most comfortable in. This provides a way of easing into the process without imposing too much of a learning curve (Bridgman 35).

As shown below, I started with something that many people have probably seen before. It's essentially a circle with a straight line down the middle, and then two lines curving from the sides of the circle to meet the end of the vertical line. This creates the basic face shape for a view of the face straight-on. However, if the face were at an angle, I'd curve the line towards the right or left. The vertical line serves as a helpful center line for the face, and helps with placement of the facial features.

Now, in this particular post I got a little too concentrated on drawing the face and didn't take pictures of the overall process. However, a tip that I have is to not dance around it. Don't nervously draw lines and contemplate if that one line is perfect! Just go for it and do what you think you need to do in order to achieve your desired result. There's no right or wrong place to start or finish.

Bridgman also explains how the facial features should follow the contour of the face. He exemplifies this when he states, "The shape of the mouth and lips is controlled by the shape of the jaw. The more curved the jaw in front the more curved the lips; the more flat it is, the straighter the lips" (Bridgman 106). In real life, there are certainly exceptions, and this is not meant as a generalization, but as a tool to utilize when drawing.

I personally decided to begin with the lips, as they seemed the simplest to draw. However, to my surprise, the nose was the easiest to draw. As expected, I spent the longest time on the eyes, simply because they held much more detail than anticipated. Once I looked closely at the photo I was using, I realized that a lot more detail goes into the face than I had previously thought. Everything, even the whites of the eyes, had shading, angles, and shadows. If I wanted it to be realistic, I needed to draw every detail I could find.

As for photo selection? If you're just starting out, I'd recommend a straight-on photo. This is typically how we envision faces, and you also won't have to worry about making the features protrude out or sink into the face, but simply showing this depth with varying values.

Overall, this is the finished product! I found that I'm quite satisfied with it, and that it's turned out much, much better than any other of my face-drawing attempts. Its not perfect of course, but it's quite a large improvement. The drawing probably took me a total time of four to five hours, from drawing the starting base to adding the final touches of shading. This clearly exhibits how time-consuming art can be.

However, I found that I strangely didn't mind it. For one, I was drawing something I actually enjoyed (the woman I drew is one of my favorite actresses), which helped quite a lot with the process. I actually had quite a bit of fun drawing this, and it was quite relaxing. I put on a TV show for some background noise (I personally cannot stand working in total silence), kept some snacks on hand in case I got hungry, and wrapped myself in a cozy blanket, and it created a very warm, comfortable experience.

Do you use art as a relaxation technique? Do you find that you draw better when you're passionate or inspired by something? Does your environment impact the quality of your work?

Bridgman, George. Constructive Anatomy. New York: Sterling Publishing Co., 2016. Print.

Shaded Daisy

"Radial or Rotational balance is any type of balance based on a circle with its design extending from or focused upon its center" (Holmes 62). This term was like a part of a foreign language to me, and the technique itself newer. While the idea of it seemed helpful it was difficult for me to do in a rush. When it comes to drawing, I'm a perfectionist and at the moment I had nothing to make the perfect circle or have perfect lines. It was hell on Earth for me.

Okay not hell but it was very frustrating!

Then I used the lines as guidance for the petals

The result wasn't great. The object failed to have rotational symmetry which Holmes described as "an object that looks the same after a certain amount of circular movement around that objects center"(62). After sketching the daisy I shaded and added the stem. 

I wasn't completely satisfied with my drawing but I was till able to learn a new technique. Did you already know about rotational balance? What other objects might this be useful for?

Shaded Snail

Catherine V. Holmes writes,"Shading is one of the easiest ways to add depth, contrast, character and movement to your drawings"(41). The author recommends the use of a light pencil such as 3B, 4B, 5B, etc. But of course an HB pencil will be just fine as well. I used HB 2. The process started with a sketch of the snail shell:

  

When beginning the shading process Holmes says to pay special attention to glared and reflections on the snail, those are the lightest areas and should be left almost white. I made sure to press lightly as Holmes recommends "don't use the full darkness of the pencil so that areas can be erased..." . Throughout the process I always made sure to keep the value scale in mind, it is a crucial part of shading. This actually took longer than I thought, about an hour and I finally had a snail:

I feel blending was the hardest part of the process. Smudging is messy, but usually my approach. However, I feel it's just not right. What is your blending technique? 

The Inner Workings

Why does a body look the way it does? The answer is quite simple, really: because of what's inside the body. When you make a fist, the protrusions on the backs of your hands are caused by bones within the body; the lump on your bicep when you flex your arm is caused by the muscle under the skin, and so on. One of the key elements of drawing human anatomy is quite simple, yet nobody seems to think of it: the inner anatomy. Not just the exterior, what we see on the outside, but recognizing what is present and where it is on the inside.

Bridgman himself states that "the eye in drawing must follow a line or a plane or a mass...the line, in actual construction, must come first; but as mental construction must precede physical, the concept of mass must come first, that of plane second, that of line last" (Bridgman 7). What he is generally saying is that when actually drawing, the line will come first; however, when picturing what to draw, you must first know the mass of what you are drawing: to visualize the foot first in order to determine where draw your first line.

Instead of drawing a complete external view all at once, I will instead draw three separate drawings: one of the leg's muscles, one of the leg's bones, and one of the legs as viewed externally. By doing this, it will give me a much clearer understanding of why the leg is structured the way it is.

A very simple drawing. The main components here
are the femur (thigh bone) and the tibia/fibula (calf
bones).

Not forgetting what I learned from my last blog post,
I also used simple construction lines here to mark out
the placement of the knee and where the foot would
begin, as well as how long the femur and fibula/tibia
would be.

The bones are quite simple, and in this particular drawing, the muscles are of more importance, as it dictates what kind of dimension and shading we'll be applying to the leg. To clarify, I also purposefully started drawing the bones first, because it's the smallest layer of the leg. From there, I would build on it by drawing the muscles, and then the exterior of the leg.

I again start with construction lines, already noting that
the muscle drawing will be much thicker than the bone
sketch.

The completed muscle drawing, with labels to the
following muscles: rectus femoris, vastus internus,
sartorius, gracilis, semi-tendinosus, semi-membranosus,
gastrocnemius, and soleus.

It should also be noted that I purposefully chose not to remove my construction lines from the bone and muscle sketch, even though I will remove it from the final drawing. This is because those lines will help me to determine some of the contours of the actual leg, and will help show me where to put construction lines for the exterior drawing.

Even though this drawing by far doesn't depict every muscle in the leg, it still serves as a good guide in order to actually begin drawing a leg. When drawing the leg, Bridgman suggests dividing the lower limb into separate parts in order to focus on the unique aspects of each area, as opposed to just adding loose details to each area (Bridgman 138). I've personally chosen to divide the leg into three parts: the leg, knee, and calf. By doing this, it will help me concentrate on each part individually and to create an overall more detailed drawing.

Once again, I start off with construction lines, trying to
stay as close to the muscle sketch as possible in order to
maintain a similar size across all three sketches.

The overall completed leg! Instead of something like
my last post, I took a more realistic approach. It's a bit
difficult to see, but there was quite a lot of shading and
detail involved even though legs are rather simplistic to draw.

I chose to use a different drawing style for the leg, as the leg doesn't have as much detail as the hand does. I opted for a realism-oriented style. A major differences you'll notice is that there isn't an outline like in my previous blog post. This is because in life, there are no outlines; I've marked out the area of the leg by very lightly shading in all parts. In order to emphasize the leg muscles and bones and the shape of the knee, I've added shading to those areas to make shadows instead of leaving it as lines. For an extra touch, I also added a gradient shading from the back of the leg to the front, representing a light shining in front of the leg.

Even though the leg doesn't have as much detail as say, the face or the hands, you still have to take into consideration many things when drawing it. For example, the small, barely noticeable bump on the back of the knee, or how the heel comes slightly out at the bottom instead of just being a straight line. This is why knowing the inner structure of the body part you're drawing is so important: it helps you to correctly draw the basic structure of the body part. If the basic form of the body part is wrong, it throws the entire drawing off, even if you put the utmost detail into everything else.

Truthfully, I don't find myself completely satisfied with the end result, but I'm also not quite sure how to fix it despite spending quite a bit of time on it. As a whole, the three drawings probably took me about an hour each, resulting in a total time consumption of three hours, possibly more for the final drawing. Do you find that art is too time-consuming, or a good way to pass time? What do you think I could do to make it more realistic and lifelike?

Bridgman, George. Constructive Anatomy. New York: Sterling Publishing Co., 2016. Print.

General drawing: Face Portrait

Now that I've experimented with some basic shapes, it's time I got into some more complex drawings. This time, I decided to draw a face portrait using what I've learned previously (lighting and shading) as well as new information that gives tips about portraits, and drawing human features properly. The two definitely work together to get the best result. "Sometimes side lighting with its interesting contrasts, helps characterize the features and shapes the male face." (Civardi 100) If you don't use proper shading techniques to portrait the appearance of light and shadow on the person's face, the drawing will fail to look truly three dimensional. Although the lighting is very important in the drawing, this is actually one of the last steps you want to do when drawing a portrait. What you want to do is first draw the basic shape of the head, then add some detail in the form of simple eyes, the nose, the ears etc. and then focus on the different surfaces and planes on the person's face before even focusing on the lighting. (Civardi 99) Unlike a simple sphere on a surface, there are more complex parts to draw. For me personally, the most difficult parts were the eyes and the mouth. Even the slightest difference in a pencil stroke could create a noticeable irregularity in the drawing. Luckily, the book did break down many of the separate parts of the face and broke down how to approach drawing them in detail. Despite this, my drawing came out a bit rough.
While many parts of the drawing are well done, like the nose and jaw, there were still many parts that did not quite match the original picture I chose of the man. Overall, the picture lacked some polish that my previous picture managed to come closer to. However, it's important to keep in mind that this was my first attempt at a face portrait, and that there should only be only improvement from here on out.

This brings up the question, what are some strategies you have when it comes to improving on accomplishing difficult tasks?

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

Shading Forms

"Value [is] added to a shape (2D) when drawing creates form (3D)" ( Holmes 30). When shading it is important to understand the lightness or darkness of a value can show where light falls on an object. By capturing the shadows and highlights of your object, shading adds depth, contrast, character, and and even movement. (Holmes 30)

Terms to :

 Highlight- the area on any surface which reflects the most light.

Shadow- A dark area cast by any object illuminated on the opposite side. 

Value Scale- lights and darks of your drawing.

Though I already had some prior knowledge about shading I never was very good at it. I had never observed how light hit an object and how it could really enhance my drawings .

How could highlight and shadows be helpful innart forms other than drawing?

The Human Hand

Whenever people compliment me for my art projects I've done in my Commercial Arts class, I only laugh, because if they saw my drawings of humans they would think it was done by a five-year-old. Though I've done quite a few drawings of objects and landscapes that I'm quite proud of, my absolute weakness is drawing humans. Details, proportions, shading, everything seems different when I attempt to draw people. Compared to my other drawings (which thus far have been exclusively objects or landscapes), my attempts at drawing people are rather laughable.

My very first project done in Commercial Arts! I'm quite proud of the shading, even if it could use a bit more contrast.

For my very first post, I decided to draw something that sounds very simple, yet is actually quite difficult: hands. Many artists agonize over drawing hands, due to the amount of precision and detail that goes into it and how hard it is to get the structure of the hand just right. Going into this book, I'd thought that it would just include helpful hints to drawing anatomy, yet the author emphasizes many important aspects I hadn't even stopped to think about.

One of the main points the author made is that you can't simply draw something you have no understanding of. In order to draw anatomy, you must know where the bones and muscles are located and how they tend to react when you perform certain movements. If you had no knowledge of human anatomy and were to simply draw a hand that is not based off of a picture, it would be difficult to draw because you wouldn't know the proportions of the hands, how the parts of the hand are related to each other, if muscles will tense or if bones will pop out in a certain position, and so on (Bridgman 6).

Bridgman also emphasized the usefulness of construction lines. These are basically lines to guide where things are located, and when drawing, I relied on them quite heavily. Bridgman explains how to take note of the placement of details when he says "the inaction construction line runs straight down the arm to the base of the little finger. The action construction line runs down the arm to the base of the thumb at the wrist, from there out to the middle joint, at the widest part of the hand; thence to the knuckle of the first finger, then to that of the second finger, then joins the inaction line at the little finger." This is an example of how to use the construction lines, and following his advice was highly helpful.

The construction lines I decided to create in order to help
guide myself on the placement of the fingers,
bone outlines, knuckles, etc.

How I used the construction lines, to get a very basic
shape of the hand using only straight lines. I focused mostly on getting the placement and size accurate.

It took me quite a few tries for me to become satisfied with the proportions. Another issue I've struggled with when drawing hands is keeping the palm and fingers proportional to one another. However, when I used construction lines, I didn't have too many issues with that!

I added smaller details such as the knuckles, the wrinkles
in the finger where there are joints, nails, etc.

Here I've started to define the contours of the hand and
strayed away from the straight lines in order to give the
hand a natural curvature.

Another technique I utilized from the book is implied lines. Implied lines are when you draw a figure, and in the outline you leave a blank space between lines, yet your mind will easily picture the line there. This is prominent at the top of the ring and pinkie finger, where I elected not to draw in the upper half of the fingers. I find that implied lines give the drawing more character, and the technique worked surprisingly well.

Here it's seen that I've gone back and shaded in some
of the parts of the hand, such as the space between the
fingers and areas on the knuckles and wrist.

After erasing the guidelines (which, looking back on, I should
have drawn a bit lighter), this is the finished product!

You may also have noticed I also added some lines that are seemingly random, but I put them there intentionally in order to show the bones and muscles that lay underneath the skin. For example, the shading along the right side of the wrist is meant to show the bone underneath the skin and to give the hand more depth. Though I am satisfied of the drawing, I'd admit that I'm not totally happy with it, mainly because I'd normally shade and fill in the hand more (which I did try, though it didn't turn out very pretty).

I found that using construction lines, something I had previously disregarded as "too much work", is actually quite helpful when I don't feel comfortable placing details through judgment alone. It's a helpful tool when you're unsure of where to place things.

A detail I quite liked about this process is how it went from such a flat sketch of straight lines to an body part with depth and character. In my opinion, that's one of the charms of art: watching a few straight turn into a detailed, realistic object, and looking at the end result and seeing how you've progressed since the start.

What's your favorite part about art, whether making or viewing it? What is, in your opinion, the best form of art (painting, drawing, sculpting, photography, etc.) and why? What makes art aesthetically pleasing to you?

Bridgman, George. Constructive Anatomy. New York: Sterling Publishing Co., 2016. Print.

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.