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Let's look through your sphere submissions and break down common shading mistakes - wrong terminator and cast shadow shapes, spotty or linear halftone transitions, and shadows that are too light.
Newest
Hanna Looye
5d
I taught a lesson on how to paint flowers and to see if I understood the shadow assignment I applied tot this Peony. I think I got it right but I would love to know if I made any mistakes.
@Rachel Dawn Owens and @Patrick Bosworth from a teachers perspective, any tips?
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3d
Great work @Hanna Looye! This is an excellent process breakdown. I really like that you kept referencing the simplified sphere idea at each stage. I think you nailed it! If you were to use this as a teaching aid, I’d say you could further simplify each step to more clearly communicate your ideas. Commit to specific rhythms so you’re using the fewest lines possible to convey the big idea, there’s a lot of ghosting and thinking in the first stage and not as many final choices. Think of the Mario Mushroom exercise, where you ghost and then commit to singular fluid lines. Similarly in the contour drawing, line quality can help simplify the overall idea. Using tapered CSI strokes for the contour line drawing will help you maintain a clean simplified linear lay in to add line weight on top of. In the main shadow area the value is applied a little unevenly, so it doesn’t read as a single solid shape of value. Evening out that value shape will help the core shadow read more dramatically by comparison. You bring it all together beautifully in the end by adding the “occlusion shadow,” so your values read very clearly at that stage! Really great advice from @Rachel Dawn Owens, as always! I think applying that idea to this final stage would be a big help to the final image and would keep the final example tied to your simplified rendering at that final stage. Keep up the good work!!
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4d
Wow, this looks awesome. Congrats on your class. I see no mistakes with your flower drawing. This is a wonderful breakdown.
All I might do is take it even further with some subtle value shifts. This will make your final drawing more dramatic and expressive.
Keep up your flower drawing classes!
@petersinger
8d
Finally caught up!
Excited to continue learning with all of you guys. Here are my 30m and 10m attempts

Graham Bassett
9d
I have been in Proko for years but it seems that these lessons are taking a very long time to get produced. Am l correct. Graham

Zosya S
16d
My shading exercise. Any feedback is welcome. Thanks.
Josh Fiddler
14d
Love that you went to oils with this!
Josh Fiddler
17d
I decided that I wasn't satisfied with doing this exercise with graphite, charcoal, pastel, and conté, so I did three more in gouache after trying a few in watercolours. The first gouache isn't quite right: the casht shadow is too large and the terminator is too high. On the second, I got better transition with the midtones. The highlight is all wrong but meh. And on the third, I'm generally happy. The watercolours were fun, but much more challenging but I started with the wrong base colour for the cast shadow anyway, so I at last just tried with black and that came out better.
Scott
17d
Applying the lessons from the critique. Digital, but used the tools in pencil paper "mode".
ANX804U
18d
thanks!
Scott
19d
self critique on attempt #2. I had improved all three of my weaknesses on this attempt. But still way off on terminator and cast shadow
Scott
19d
self critique on attempt #1
Lin
20d
Anybody know what brush Stan is using here, please?

Dennis Yeary
20d
I noticed my problem is the half tones I might have to go back over the lesson this weekend.
Does this apply to color cause they feel connected.
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About instructor
Founder of Proko, artist and teacher of drawing, painting, and anatomy. I try to make my lessons fun and ultra packed with information.