Shading Light and Form – Basics

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Shading Light and Form – Basics

Lesson by

Stan Prokopenko

in Figure Drawing Fundamentals

1.4M

Mark as Completed

Assignments 132Lesson NotesDownloads 2

Shade an Egg

Take an egg out of your fridge and place it on a piece of white paper. Light it with a direct lightsource (desk lamp, flashlight, etc…) Shade the egg using what you learned from this lesson. Identify a clear shadow shape with the core shadow and cast shadow. When you fill in the values, separate the lights and dark and keep that separation and you add the halftones and occlusion shadows. Change the light angle and draw it again!

@usernamegobrrr

•

6mo

Hi, here's my attempts at shading some vaguely egg-like circles. (Not sure if it makes a significant difference in clarity, but I included photos with and without lamp light.)

@hmedhat96

•

8mo

Martha Muniz

•

8mo

Very lovely! You have already a great description of form, the only thing I would recommend is further pushing the definition a bit with some contrast. You could even achieve this by only adding a bit of darker value in the current darkest areas, making it really pop and read more clearly. Great work nonetheless! :)

@lazy0

•

1yr

Another Batch of shading studies, could someone give me honest feedback of these? I'm having trouble with the bounce light also having trouble with placing the cast shadows to look somewhat accurate to the reference, Honest feedback needed please thank you.

Camellito

•

1yr

Well, if I had to give you some advice, it would just be to darken the shadow values a little more. But everything else is fine. It shows that you understand the concept of light shadow. Keep it up!

Rachel Dawn Owens

•

1yr

These are perfect!

@lazy0

•

1yr

These where done digitally, I know the cast shadows are a bit wonky and out of shape, but I need some help with seeing more mistakes in these shading studies. Also the proportions are off in the second and third one, but I cant find any more mistakes, Please critique and don't hold back I want everyone's honest feedback.

@lazy0

•

1yr

Okay thank you

Rachel Dawn Owens

•

1yr

Spot on! The values are excellent and I see no issues with proportion. You could try to add that bit of reflected light from the ball on the tables. Light can bounce all over the place. Bounce light makes a form feel more real. Overall these are rendered very nicely. Good work!

Sofi

•

2yr

Hello, here are my shaded eggs. Feedback would be greatly appreciated.

hArtMann

•

2yr

Had a lot of fun with this assignment. For some reason I didn't get highlights.

carla toms

•

2yr

super fun to look at! the form light, half tones, and bounce light look great to my eye, particularly on images 3,and 4. On image 1, the egg on the left, and on image 2 there is a little more half tone on the pointy part of the egg than my eye is expecting and i'm wondering if lightening it a little would improve the image but i'm not sure. now, consistently, there's a darker cast shadow and a lighter cast shadow. are these the ambient occlusion shadow and the cast shadow or the cast shadow and the penumbra? i can't be sure from looking. i'm wondering if it would improve the image to darken the ambient occlusion shadow and blur the penumbra. what do you think?

Donald Nichols

•

2yr

these look amazing

@atv

•

2yr

Hi, these are my attempts for the egg shading. I have problems with the reflected light.

@bettkevin

•

2yr

@bettkevin

•

2yr

these were my first attempts where l faced quite a challenge with value. Despite the challenge l noticed that in some instances the cast shadow could be casted on the form shadow and l wondered of the drawing approach towards that.

@bettkevin

•

2yr

Martha Muniz

•

2yr

Hi Kevin! It looks pretty nice, I would just recommend fading out the core shadow more into the light, not too much where the light becomes dark, but enough where it's a softer transition. Right now there's a bit of a sharp divide between the dark and light sides so fading it a touch can help.

@bettkevin

•

2yr

My name is Kevin, and this was my take on the assignment. Gladly pass on any critique on how l could further improve my pencil renderings

Samuel Sanjaya

•

2yr

Did a simple (traditional, charcoal) and a more complicated shapes value study(digital). Is charcoal supposed to be this texturely ? I saw on youtube people seems to be able to shade with charcoal evenly. Anyway, any feedback/critiques on the value study will be greatly appreciated..

Martha Muniz

•

2yr

Hi Samuel! Great Asaro head study! Something for the simples shapes studies is that I'd recommend starting by placing the terminator line, then the shadow group, then layering on top to add the halftones and darkening the darkest areas of the shadows. Being able to break down any subject into just light and dark groups is key to rendering and shading. Also, as for charcoal, it can be rather textural depending on what type you are using and on what type of paper. In my experience, charcoal paper has given me more texture, so I opted for smoother drawing paper, but I didn't experiment much beyond that. I would recommend just trying different kinds to see what you like best personally or looking at reviews. Also, as you are practicing, try out newsprint if you can--it's very cheap so you can get a lot of mileage practicing without worry, it's good with charcoal, and ateliers tend to use it.

Samuel Sanjaya

•

2yr

attempting the egg again, I hope i can get some feedbacks..

Martha Muniz

•

2yr

Hi there! Remember to keep the shadows darker than the lights. While it's great you're taking into account the reflected light, the effect it has on the egg would be much softer, so the value would remain darker than even the darkest light area. Hope this helps, keep up the good work :)

Samuel Sanjaya

•

2yr

I could swear that I shade the halftones much darker than that. I guess my eyes still need more practices.

Eveline Rupenko

•

2yr

Hi! Here are few sketches I've made for this assigment!

faye zhang

•

2yr

I put a lot of effort into drawing these eggs. I even enjoyed doing them, compared to years ago when I wasn’t willing to spend sufficient time on them. I also watched Dorian Iten’s video on how to shade an egg.

@elkad

•

2yr

Here are some eggs! (In charcoal + 1 graphite. Might have a go at digital later). I haven't had much practice with charcoal or the overhand grip so these came out a little rough. Plus I think the paper was too textured or maybe the sandpaper I used was too coarse cause the lines ended up being roughly textured. One thing I could work on is hatching. I tried following the contours to some degree but ends up looking a little sparodic. Any other critiques are appreciated!

@kotka

•

2yr

I had the same problems, my paper was wave as if previously moist and dried, and there were some weird scratchy bits in the charcoal! Still looking for the perfect paper that I can get a hold of in Europe/Scandinavia without luck...

@elkad

•

2yr

Tasty digital eggs :)

@opaqueapple

•

3yr

Hi everyone, I did some shading on eggs as the exercise for this section; The first page i initially ended up taking the pictures for which i used as reference. the order which they are uploaded by should go by order of the number on the page. As for the second page, i unfortunately didnt take any reference photos. Any Critiques would be much appreciated!

Jesper Axelsson

•

3yr

Hi @opaqueapple, nice studies! I think the core shadows are really nice! - I think the values in the shadow are getting to close to the values in the light, which diminishes the feeling of form. As a rule of thumb 'the lightest dark should be darker than the darkest light'. You might appreciate this video Mind-Blowing Realistic Shading Tricks. If you want to learn more about values, you can access the How to Organize Values lesson for free through the Proko Course Sampler. Hope this helps :)

@emmahubner

•

3yr

I did my practice studies digitally. Learning the different terms for the shadows and light was useful. Any feedback would be appreciated. Thanks!

@tudor

•

3yr

This is today practice for the shadow mapping. Difficult but fun :))) Any comment is appreciated. Have a nice practice day!

@tudor

•

3yr

Hello there proko peeps :))) This is another exercise on the basics of shading. I see it as an improvement with regard to the shadow hierarchy, but the reflected light doesn't convince me in this one. The photo has a very strong bounced light from the table. Any suggestions on how can I capture it more properly is welcome.

@emmahubner

•

3yr

Your shadows stand out as being nice to me (especially the occlusion and the terminator) It could be the photo, but I think you could benefit from making the center light lighter. Also adding in a highlight would be nice. Overall I think your shadows are great and your egg looks very 3D.

Bryce Gay

•

3yr

Here's my first attempt at shading. Feedback would be nice.

@vital_ash

•

3yr

The transition from highlight to the darkest midtone should be a more gradual transition unless you’re going for a blown-out exposure where the light appears super bright. A picture of your reference would be helpful to know what conditions you were working off of. Also, the lightest dark (your reflected light) should not be brighter than your darkest light (the midtone) as a general rule of thumb. There are places where the rule does not apply, but those are much rarer than simple accidents.