Pm2-01-06-2018

Exercise from January that I didn't bother to post at the time.  It shows how I recycled the daily exercise to practice shading with tone and hard black.  Even when the shade is dark, I like throwing light into the darkness to create an atmospheric effect, as with the figure in the bottom row, second from left.  It doesn't take more than a few black slabs to give the wire shapes a sense of weight and solidity.  And it doesn't take much after that to realize a fuller sense of dimension with atmosphere and spatial depth by turning some of that black into gray.  The thing to remember is to keep the range of grays separate and distinct between the light and dark zones - no lights in the dark zone that are of equal intensity to lights in the light zone.  Or, another way to say it, is that the lightest tone in the shadows is always darker than any tone in the light zone.   

For this one (not necessarily mine, but the ones you do) I recommend viewing large (x500) and small (thumbnail view - postage stamp.)  Compare.  Study the illusions.  Learn to use them.  

A variant of the exercise is to hit the darks first, then complete the form with lines.  You can get a lot of mileage from a simple croquis exercise by recycling it to meet different needs - for example, to develop skill for line, tone and color.