'Value'
is lightness or darkness (shading) and enables us to depict 3
dimensional objects. Before we began drawing, we shaded different values with Charcoal pencils. We
all noticed that the soft charcoal makes a fairly dark line and it is hard to make light values. However the charcoal is
easily blended with our fingers and with kneaded erasers.
Using
these techniques, we transformed a 2-D circle into a 3-D sphere!
We drew a circle freehand, chose a light source position, then began
shading with charcoal. Of course the darkest shadows were directly
opposite to the light source, the lightest areas were facing the light
source and the cast shadow was very dark. We found that shading in a
curved arc and finger blending in that same arc gave the most realistic
shadowing effect. We experimented 'lifting' some of the charcoal with
erasers. We also tried to blend the different values together
(to avoid stark lines) by smearing the charcoal with our fingers away
from the darker areas into the lighter areas. Wow, messy but it worked!
All
of these same techniques were used to create the 3-D snowmen below
keeping in mind the light source location, cast shadows of each of the
snowman sections and smooth blending. Some kids chose to add eyes,
buttons, nose, mouth and other snowman accoutrements. Of course the
snowmen couldn't just sit out in space, so we added some hills and trees. As an added challenge some students drew geometric 3-D shapes. Styrofoam cylinders, spheres and blocks were set up in groups with only bright windows behind. The students drew the objects according to the orientation that they observed, then shaded them to show where the light and shadows fell. The results were amazing!
