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See Art in a Fresh Way |
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Mini-Tutorial: Lights and Darks in 3's |
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One big problem that artists
face when developing light and shadow in a work is that they
tend to have the exact same darks and lights scattered
around the surface. The result is that it kills the life out of
the drawing! A great way to solve that problem is to celebrate a hierarchy of lights and darks. The simplest way to do that is to focus on three different tones of lights and darks. Here I will take you through what I mean.
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 Dreams of Round Things, 2006, charcoal on Rives BFK, 19x26"
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After I had lined up the proportions of Kelly, I was ready to organize my tones. |
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The real-life background was a dark, cobalt blue felt
air mattress. Since the darkest object was going to be her
hair, I chose the mattress as my 2nd darkest object.
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Here I have two things blocked
out--her dark hair and the background.
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Here I added my third dark--her
cast shadow on the floor. Next, I started on the
lights. The highlight on the wood floor was going to be my least
brightest of the lights. My choice for the tones was not arbitrary. I compared and contrasted all the tones in my field of vision. Kelly has a lovely light skin, so I knew she was going to be the lightest thing in the drawing, even though she was predominately in shadow. After I mildly blocked out the light of the floor I was ready to start on her. The light on her leg looks almost shockingly bright, but, technically, I knew that brighter whites were available to me. For you artists, I was using soft charcoal pencils and a kneaded eraser. The kneaded erasers are wonderful for lightening the paper, yet it takes some hard erasers to bring out the brightest whites. |
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Here everything is blocked
out. I clearly have dark, darker, and darkest : the cast shadow, the background, and her hair. For the lights, the highlights on her shoulder, breast, and forearm are the brightest. The rest of her body is the second brightest, while the surface of the floor is the least bright.
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| For the rest of the drawing, I am molding, tweaking, and detailing her and the background--being careful to be well aware of my hierarchy of lights and darks. |
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Towards the end of the drawing is the easiest place to lose sight of your hierarchy of the lights and darks. For example, I began to add the details of the shadows and highlights of the mattress' circular cushions. There were many really dark shadows, and, of course, the mistake would have been to make them as dark as her hair. So it took some discipline to make them as dark as possible without stepping over the boundary to my darkest black. The consequence is that her hair has a kind of brilliant, rich freshness to it that would have been lost otherwise.
It should be a lot of fun for you to try this technique out--or to look for a hierarchy of lights and darks in other artists' works. Enjoy. Michael
Newberry |
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©2006 Newberry, All rights reserved. |