'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! 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.
