Intro to Value and Shadow Scales

[New Masters Academy]

In this lesson, instructor Joshua Jacobo will introduce you to a crucial lecture on value and shadow scales. You will learn to create three and five-value scales using charcoal, graphite, and a non-black material. Then, Joshua will teach you a technique for creating shadow scales, used to create reliably even “steps” from one value to another. From there, you will utilize the shadow scale to calibrate your value scales. This lesson not only trains you to judge values but also helps strengthen your hatching and blending skills.

This lesson belongs to the course Beginner’s Guide to Drawing. It is a 12-week course designed to empower new students with a structured approach for learning how to draw. Join instructors Steve Huston, Chris Legaspi, Heather Lenefsky, Bill Perkins, and Mark Westermoe as you learn the fundamentals of perspective, rendering, and composition. After completing this course, you will develop a solid foundation in drawing.

Throughout this course, you’ll have access to the NMA community for feedback and critiques to improve your work as you progress.

[john gray]

I signed up for the basic plan. Do I upload homework? I decided to anyway.  I’m not planning to change careers or go to art school.  This is a bucket list present to myself.  For what it’s worth, let me add that if I didn’t see the value of these exercises I’d curse the instructor and all his descendants for all eternity.  I discovered that I (expletive deleted) at seeing values.

I did most of the work after O dark hundred and it shows. Maybe it’s my eyes but the darker values were much harder to judge. Comparing the charcoal, 25% and 50% were pretty close but the 75% was too dark. It’s also very hard when there are multiple shadows. If you use two lights to reduce paper glare you get rather confusing shadows. Just looking around the rooms reveals multiple shadows of different depth with hard edges, soft edges.

I wonder if it’s a useful exercise to draw a rectangle continuously shaded from light to dark and seem how closely it matches a shadow scale.  I tried it and I tend to stay too dark reflecting the problems I had judging values in the exercises.

I accidently used 9 boxes instead of 8. Luckily that gives 12.5% steps so you get boxes at 24%, 50% and 75% .

 

 

 

 

[Barbara]

I noticed that Joshua had 8 values in the first shadow scale, and only 7 in the second one on newsprint. He used the same percentages though, and left out the 85.8%. This is why, when he calibrated the value scale on newsprint,  his values were so dramatically off.

[Barbara]

[Sara Elb]

Hello,

I’ve been trying many times to color things after drawing and I never was successful. Thank you Joshua for this practise, it’s not easy, I needed a lot of time to do it, and it was not obvious to judge the right value. Plus I really suffered with the grain on the paper, it was a cheap paper but it was for drawing and sketching and it has a light grain that keeps white space when coloring it. The eraser I had was a cheap one, and I had to blow the dust many times until I got things from my mouth on the paper and it ruined some of the values I worked on (25% non black, and 50% graphite on the blended side).

there is clearly a big difference between blending and not blending, I come to appreciate both ways of coloring.

Here are my excercice, although it’s not that clean, graphite and charcoal was all over my hand, my desktop and the paper 🙁

 

[Louis Evans]

[Louis Evans]

[shazia juna]

Hello,  This is a comment for NMA team. In Chapter 1 of Week 3’s course, the instructor states that Newsprint paper does not contain cellulose in it. Given my background as a chemist (with expertise in related area of starch and polysaccharides gained through my academic research), I would like to inform you that nearly all papers are made of cellulose, including Newsprint.

Cellulose is derived from various botanical sources: 1. Wood pulp, 2. Cotton, 3. Bamboo, 4. other plant waste such as rice husks etc. The cheapest and most common source of cellulose is wood pulp, and depending on the extent of processing wood pulp paper contains varying degrees of cellulose and some amounts of lignins. Lower quality and often cheaper paper, including Newsprint, contain lignins alonside cellulose. But the major constituent in these wood-pulp derived paper, including Newsprint, is Cellulose.  During the manufacturing of Newsprint paper, the lignins are not removed from the wood pulp (major constituent is still cellulose) which are responsible for yellowing of the paper (oxidation process) and therefore non-archival.

The major constituent of Cotton paper is also Cellulose, as with wood pulp-derived paper! The cellulose fibres in cotton paper are considerably longer (hence stronger) than the cellulose fibres derived from wood-pulp, which contributes to the archival quality of paper made from cotton.

There are of course some papers which are not made of cellulose such as Yupo paper which are extruded from polypropylene. Another example is Mineral or Stone paper which is made of 80% Calcium Carbonate and 20% HDPE (high density polyethylene plastic resin).

I hope you will consider the information and consult some resources online to update the information in this lecture.

[shazia juna]

A comment on the graphite shine for the 3 value scale: One of the reasons that graphite pencil layers on paper have a “shine” is the presence of fat/oils in the binder. Fats or oils are added to facilitate the adhesion of graphite particles to the surface of the paper. I think there is a patent online by General pencils from the 1970s which shows a typical formulation of graphite pencil lead. I stumbled across this information when I was searching for vegan-friendly (and cruelty-free) graphite pencils. Majority of the pencil manufacturers tend to use tallow (animal-fat) in softer graphite  pencils (B and softer). Faber Castell is the only manufacturer I know of that uses synthetic oil in the graphite pencils, and are vegan-friendly. The softer the graphite pencil (ie higher the B value) the higher content of fat/oils. Generally, the amount of fat/oil content is directly proportional the softness value of the graphite pencil.

In water-soluble graphite pencils, the binder is gum arabic which isn’t as reflective. To understand this, I compared 8B pencils from the same manufacturer(s) one which was a normal (non-watersoluble) 8B pencil (contains oil in the binder) with a water-soluble 8B pencil (contains gum arabic in the binder). As expected, the area shaded with a  water-soluble 8B pencil was less reflective and less shiny than the area shaded with the non-watersoluble counterpart 8B graphite pencil. If anyone is interested in undertaking this study, it is important to acquire the water-soluble graphite pencil in the same grade (for example, compare 8B with another 8B water-soluble pencil) and they must be from the same manufacturer. I have a hand-held Near Infrared Spectrometer and I measured the intensities of the shaded areas which did confirm this.

I read about Faber Castell`s PITT Graphite Matt range pencil which claims to have reduced reflectivity and ranges from HB to 14B. I hope to purchase one or two of these pencils in the near future.

Perhaps I will share my findings here in the future. I will also share my blogpost which will discuss the relative shine of the graphite pencils and provide the intensity curves I measured with the portable Near Infrared spectrometer.

[shazia juna]

Just clarifying my first statement, in my previous post. The factors contributing to the Graphite shine are: 1. increased content of graphite in softer pencils (which Joshua Jacobo mentions in the video),  and 2. fat/oil content in the binder to facilitate the transfer of graphite particles on the paper surface. Both graphite content and the fat/oil increases with the softness of the pencil (higher B values).

Another point I want to make is that there are Sanguine Pitt Oil base pencils which are smoother than the Conte Sanguine pencil. The former smudges less. Both are nice to work with but have different qualities in terms of adhesion to the paper (in turn influencing the mark marking process) and reflectivity (sanguine Pitt is more shiny than the Conte Sanguine or a Pastell Sanguine).

I would have liked to see the value chart and a discussion of the Conte a Paris pencils particularly the Pierre Noire range. They are rarely discussed in instructional drawing books. But I have seen them being used in other NMA courses, and look forward to learning how to use them.

 

[Jibak Bhattacharya]

[Jibak Bhattacharya]

[Claire]

[Kris]

Very crooked and the outlines are too harsh but at least now I know! I think the scales done with the shadow exercise turned out a lot better. I was also able to complete them much quicker 🙂

[Gerda Kromane]

[Author]

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