Start with a linear layin, in this case it’s just a circle and some ellipses for the cast shadow and terminator
Separate light from shadow with a flat value
Model the core shadow and reflected light
Render the halftones
Add the highlight
Deepen the occlusion shadow
Fade the penumbra
And make your final adjustments

The most important aspect of this exercise is getting your value relationships correct. If your edges are rough, and your spheres look like they're sculpted from clay or play-doh, that's totally fine!

Level 2

You’ll be doing timed studies. This will force you to internalize the process and improve efficiency.

Untimed - You give yourself as much time as you need to get it right. One slow, fully rendered, realistic sphere, with careful edges and clean values.
25 minutes - This is still plenty of time. You'll have several minutes to spend on refining each element.
10 minutes - You’re gonna start feeling rushed. You don’t have the time to labor over any details. You have only a minute or 2 to quickly indicate the correct values of each element.
5 minutes - This is hard. Don’t try to make your drawing look polished. Simplify everything and get that quick impression working. Repeat these until you internalize the process and get faster.

Reducing time forces you to prioritize. Taking 5 minutes instead of an hour to shade a sphere means cutting 57 minutes of something. You have to identify the critical 5% of effort creating the illusion of depth. You can carry that knowledge over to your longer drawings and spend more of your effort on those critical things.

Timed studies also build mark-making efficiency and better draftsmanship. You don't have time to overwork your lines and smudge things around. With no time to overwork your lines, you have to practice putting down a few strokes that indicate your intention.

Submit Your Drawings

After you’re done, upload your completed sphere drawings below. And try to reflect on it. What did you struggle with, what worked, what didn't. This helps me provide better feedback and allows you to practice more deliberately.

Level 2, write down what you prioritized, what you removed, if your approach changed at all between the studies, and anything you learned about efficient rendering.

Deadline - submit by April 18, 2025 for a chance to be in the critique video!

onigi *pronunce [on-ie-gee]*

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The level 1 assignment again after watching the critique video. I feel I spent too much time finishing this project, as it took me 70 minutes.😅 The light side looks awkward, but I failed to fix it.

Elie Eid

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Melanie Scearce

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Spent a couple hours shading some spheres. It was surprisingly fun, although I think this assignment would be good to space out over a couple of days. By the 5 minute sphere I felt like I could shade a sphere with my eyes closed. The untimed drawing ended up being around 55 minutes. The spheres got progressively smaller from there 😂 I had a difficult time separating the core shadow value from the occlusion shadow value enough.

Jyayasi (*Jay-o-she*)

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All of them look perfect! Reducing the size helped you achieve a similar finish in the 5 min one as the others.

Sita Rabeling

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Started yesterday with the first image to get into the project and worked on the others today. I still have to find the right paper for graphite and then hope to get more contrast in the drawing. Will need to practice more for this assignment.

Maria Bygrove

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:D Love the fingers in the photo - clearly an important tool!

Patrick Hynes

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I am really digging the idea of the timed study -- especially the 5min one. Beyond what was mentioned in the project instructions, I feel like the time constraint is kind of liberating. There's less pressure to produce something that looks good because, you know, you only spent 5 minutes on it. This helps with the motivation to practice. I can consider a drawing a success even if it doesn't look so great as long as I'm focused on the key concepts and getting the repetitions in.

Gannon Beck

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This is something I need to spend more time on. I can tell I've got a little bit of fear of it because when I went to dive into the lessons this morning, I ended up cleaning my office for an hour to avoid it. I have spent some time on these concepts before this thanks to Dorian Iten's lessons, but not nearly enough. Looking at what I just did, I think I need to get my dark halftones just a little bit darker.

Vera Robson

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I feel entirely clueless, and it is too late for any hope to get into the critique video 😐

Josh Fiddler

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Good times.

Rachel Dawn Owens

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Lovely

@a_stat

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Pre-demo attempt. I found the half-tones to be very difficult, especially trying to describe any sort of "roundness" with them.

sara keyes

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Scott N

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10d

Level One, pre demo video. These are challenging but rewarding. I'm starting to understand how to identify the plane changes and the shape of the form is slowly (very slowly 😂) starting to reveal itself. The lamberts cosine rule video helped a lot but I have a long way to go with my control and being able to show those value changes. I'll watch the demo videos and then back to practice!

@madin

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10d

A few quick spheres i did with inks and pens while i was out, will try some graphite and digital sketches later

@madin

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graphite attempt

Juice

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10d

I did som digital spheres also. The unlimited and first one took me a lot longer than my untimed traditional one. Many hours since I’m still learning my digital tools. But second one was going a lot faster i was aiking at 25 min but felt finished after 15 min. And I learned some tricks that made it faster. Using much bigger brush. Wich actually made it look better than my untimed one so i went back (since it is untimed i could still continue) and used that trick.

Dermot

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10d

I'm sorry I missed the deadline ! Here's a sphere attempt. I way over worked on this Sphere which was probably not very productive as the shading isn't great. It looks as if the sphere is falling off the cast shadow! The occlusion at the bottom looks like a line is that acceptable or should the same tone spread out more? I'm looking at the highlight, I'm not sure how to place it. It was a bit of a guess. Is it okay to draw a line from the light source through the sphere to help identify it's path and highlight? Any feedback from anyone would be appreciated. Thanks

@vincy7

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11d

Finally, I caught up with the progress. I don't know if it's correct to deal with light and dark. The five-minute drawing time is too rushed, and I can't line up according to the structure.

Rachel Dawn Owens

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11d

I learn something new every time I go back to the basics. Core shadows make a little more sense to me after running through this exercise today.

Alain Rivest

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11d

Second attempt while watching the first demo (untimed).

Vishal Hudge

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11d

I'm still working on achieving consistent shading, and it's a long way to go. For this piece, I used a flat brush for blending.

Juice

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12d

oI did a lot of untimed ones before these til I felled comfortable enough to do the timed ones. When I did my first one it felt more uncomfortable than I first thought trying to shade even in de same direction as the ball and not just little circles everywhere. Some angles more uncomfortable than other. Ive also got used to draw on loose paper I can change angle on so I can draw from comfortable angles. But I used sketchpad on my easel on my armchair table and it wasn’t as easy to turn around. Especially not at the shorter times. But after some untimed ones it felt alot better. At first I used HB for the light halftones and 4b and 6b for shadows. But after a while I just used HB for marking everything out at first then I used 4b for also light halftones because it wasn’t easier to get smooth and was faster. When I began I thought that it would take me about 60 min to make the sphere when I took all time I needed. But it took me just 25 min. And allmost felt like I missed something. But till the timed ones I took it slower for the long one and took a bit more time to erase some little stuff around and be more thorough. With my 6b that a woodless pencil. I don’t know if it because its a woodless pencil or if its a difference between 4b and harder and 6b and softer. But I use that pencil at last and try to be thorough so I don’t neeed to erase something of. But it happend that I needed to erase something little on the light side of the core shadow where I used 6b. And when its erased something happends with the glossiness on the paper. Wich makes it look like darker spots in some angles and when I take a photo. Its same value but different gloss wich changes the value in some angles. When I did these spheres one of my focuses was to be sure the bounce light was darker th

Juice

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12d

I have problems writing the whole text. But it should be this at the end “When I did these spheres one of my focuses was to be sure the bounce light was darker than the darkest light midtone. It is hard to see when drawing because the bounce appears much lighter than it is. But I put some layers over the formshadows til I was sure it was darker than the light.”