Drawing Light and Shadows - dummies

Drawing Light and Shadows

Light and shadows visually define objects. Before you can draw the light and shadows you see, you need to train your eyes to see like an artist.

Values are the different shades of gray between white and black. Artists use values to translate the light and shadows they see into shading, thus creating the illusion of a third dimension.

Hatching and crosshatching are simple and fun techniques for drawing shading.

A full range of values is the basic ingredient for shading. When you can draw lots of different values, you can begin to add shading, and therefore depth, to your drawings.

With shading, the magical illusion of three-dimensional reality appears on your drawing paper. Figure 1 demonstrates hot to take a simple line drawing of a circle and add shading to transform it into the planet Earth.