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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.
LESSON NOTES
In this lesson, we review common challenges in creating value scales and offer practical tips to improve your work. We address difficulties in distinguishing adjacent mid-tones and explain why it's important to use the full value range in your drawings. You'll learn how to establish your darkest dark and middle value to anchor your scale. We also discuss how paper texture and pencil choice affect shading, and the impact of lighting when drawing and photographing your artwork. This lesson aims to help you better perceive and render subtle differences in value.
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critique-value-scales.mp4
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critique-value-scales-captions-spanish.srt
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Let’s take a look through your value scales!
When you're working on your value scales, it's common to have trouble seeing the subtle differences in mid-tones. One big mistake I saw in a lot of your work was not going dark enough with your values. Make sure to stretch your range all the way to black and get comfortable using darker tones. Also, don’t jump too quickly from your darkest value to the next one. That compresses your mid-tones and makes it harder to see the steps clearly.
This critique really helped me out i tired to stay away from the common mistake but i think i still ended up making it lol. but it was really helpful letting me see vaules abit better
Thank you, Stan, for all the tips on types of pencils and paper, lights and taking photos! Love how each type of video (lessons, projects, demos and critique), each have lots of valuable information!
for feedback on something like value scales pictures have to be taken with better lighting.. the upper left side of your pages is lit up while the bottom right is in shadow affecting all of your work on the page
Thanks for the direct critique Stan! Totally see what you're saying about the jumps in value, though I'm still struggling a bit. Hard one!
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1yr
Lots of layering directional lines. Try to copy this drawing and see what you figure out! Study the drawing, work in layers and start lightly. Notice how the artist follows the cross contours of the portrait.
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1yr
Incredible value and edge control
Thx for the advice Stan, The graphite one is definitely something that I am proud of, although the 0 and 1 could be done better. The airbrush one is not a trick or what, I just use it like a pencil, use the pure black (value 0) and use pressure to adjust the value, things got me confused is that it s hard to make the value consistent... Anyone have the experience on using that?
Thank you Stan for addressing my question! It was super helpful to see the exact tools you used in Photoshop to clean up my photo. No more excuses for posting murky images 😉
Thanks for the feedback, I have tried again and made the darkest value darker and the middle value darker, but I think the darker values (3 and 4) are now too similar. It's really hard!
Is that value scale you showed in the beginning called denman ross value scale ? should i print that one out ? If not could you maybe share the one you showed ?
Thanks for the detailed comment about the light. My desk lamp was good enough for all my hobbies so far, even for fairly precise work, like sewing or drawing with a fineliner. But distinguishing the subtle differences between the values in this assignment appeared difficult. I definitely have to test some different bulbs.
My problem was that my lightest tone was to dark. And the steps on my lighter Tones was to big. And my dark Tones was like one big dark value. I will do it again and use my new led i got. 2H. Before my lightest pen was HB. Had the same problem with my alkohol markers. Dont know how to make the lightest marker lighter. Maybe use a layer of uncolored alcohol first by using the blender. And use white colored pencil afterwards.
As a near sighted person, when I take of my glasses and squint it actually makes my vision more clear. So my two options are no glasses or squint with glasses on.
Hey thanks Stan for reviewing my value scale. Here is the sketch pad I used. And yes, it is a kneaded eraser. It's yellow, not green. Just very dirty! ;)
Just seconds after i was thinking ”what is that sketchbook?” Proko said the same 😄 cool never seen anything like it
