We've spent quite a lot of time honing our fundamental drawing
skills. Now, we undertake our exploration of casts. By removing
the color we have a chance to really figure out what the form
is.
We take everything we know about light and shadow and
learn to now apply it to an organic element ,figuring out
where to establish our major changes in plane.
With that let's begin.

Alright, now that we've practiced the principles of
light and shadow as well as an understanding of changes in
plane on the curvature of
of an obje,ct taking it all the way to sort of a simplified
head,
let's take these principles and practice them on something a
little more organic
and extremely useful in the entirety of your
artistic education. So we're going to practice it right now,
but I'm going to talk about how you can then come back and
explore these objects again. So what we're starting with is the
eye taken as a piece from Michelangelo's David. With that,
let's begin. David with that let's begin.

Okay.
So there are few things here that are important.
Let's begin the way that we
did with everything up to this point by just figuring
out the general placement on the page, the general angles, and
tilts as well. So just to make sure you can take a couple
of angles just to be sure what that tilt is. Because you see
the eye here - and by eye, I refer to the entirety of the cast.
I'm not only talking about
the eye, right. I'm not only talking about the eye
and this is very very important. And so this is - I'm
not going to get into too many anatomical concepts
certainly any of that. I don't think that's that important at
the moment,
but I just - the idea is, right, to think of the eye and you'll see
that this becomes important, even more later on the idea is
to think of the eye as the area around the eye as well. And in
this case
this problem is kind of just right ahead, right in front of us.
It's solved for us because we have the cast and we need to
figure out the cast in its entirety
and draw the cast in its entirety. So see so I'm more
concerned right now with this - the front plane of
the of the rectangular prism almost a square.
I'm interested in the tilt, right, so we can even kind of
try to imagine what the plane is
here, right. Like what is the plane that I'm looking at?
Because I'm interested in seeing the eye tilting
a bit. This will all help, right? This'll all help. At the same
time I do want to talk a little bit
about what this assignment is at the Academy of Fine Arts in
St. Petersburg. In the Repin Academy this assignment is
done right after the skull, right? So it's sort of -it's a
little bit more part of anatomy than it is an exercise about
changes of plane, light and shadow and all this. It's
all of that coupled with anatomy. Now I think doing it
earlier, right, before we get into the skull and all of that
is actually helpful because it already introduces you and you
realize that a general idea of like of my approach and my
interpretation of the approach is that I'm all - I believe in
spending time
on just getting accustomed to something and what it looks in
a sort of unadulterated way
and I think that is
in a lot of ways preferable at least to begin with before
you then go and analyze and understand what the form is in
terms of the internal structures and all that stuff.
So at the same time, I'm observing, I'm taking angles,
going from this inner corner to this outer corner, right, seeing
what those are, seeing what the this whole area of the brow
looks like just working in line, some alignments mainly trying
to see what the proportions are here. The proportions in this
eye are quite nice as you just -
I would go from the entirety of the sort of small eye, right, the
eye as we just understand the eye itself and move it up.
This proportion it's exactly - this line should be the halfway
point between here and here, this part underneath it should
be smaller. So let's make that correction, right? Right. Don't
just think of everything inside the eyelids. At least
think of it to the top of the upper eyelid as you see it and
the lowest part of the lowest part of the
of the eyelid underneath. So as you see I already
have something that's a semblance of that eye at the
appropriate tilt and just a general
feeling of the cast in space.
Okay, so just let's just - I'm just going to
keep at it without breaking it up as of yet. We have not had
the practice of taking a form that's organic and breaking it
up. We did it with some of the cylindrical
objects, but we went from a form that had a plane
and then we went and sort of smoothed it out. In this case the
process is the inverse. We need to see something that appears like
it has a very smooth even curvature and break it up into
planes at least a little bit.
Now, okay. Now I will kind of return to what this assignment
was in school. The assignment in school
was more anatomical. Now, I think what's the advantage of
doing it now, as I said , is you're getting accustomed to it just getting accustomed to it
and we're practicing all these things that we practiced.
But what's most important is that once we do get into the
anatomy of the skull and the orbits of the eyes and all
that stuff
then
you can
then come back to this assignment
and work alongside me once again, except this time having
a little bit of a advantage in a sense because now you'll know
what those forms are but there's also the advantage of
you having done this
before, done this
more than once, right? And that's all practice really is it's
just doing things over and over again until improved.
So now as you see I'm sort of penciling in you know, I mean
the fact that I'm using
a pencil is the other thing, but I'm just sort of
just jotting sort of the end of the lower eyelid as you see
it starting from
the inner corner moving to the outer corner,
but I'm also beginning to hint at the general shadow right?
I'm not getting there yet, but I just want it there for
proportions. Because
I'm thinking that the distance between the inner corner of the
side of the cast.
Something's a little off in my -
in what I'm doing here.
But I'm not going to change the general proportions.
And you
sort of remember what the the main concept is. The main
concept is you take the proportions, you take the angles
after you have something on the page.
So I pretty much I'm taking the width of the cast at
the eye, at the eye line pretty much there, and moving it
upwards
and I get it up to here, right? It's not exactly a square, but
it's very close. I'll just use my hand. All right, good. I can hands. All right, good. I can
actually maybe squeeze this part in a little bit.
I think we're set.
In terms of just the overall proportions. So I would like to
get into the shadows right? And so there are multiple
approaches here.
One
would be to just lay in the shadows as I observe them and
that's good and kind of construct into it right the
other approach and I think I'm going to go with that one is to
begin to break this up into planes right away.
Make sure they're in place, correct the outlines more and
more, and then lay the shadows in following the methodology
that we've already discussed.
So in order to see this though, you must think a little bit
more like a sculptor and for this maybe you need to move
around a little bit, right so and see
especially because this cast has edges, you're able to see
major changes along those edges and see how they continue
inward into the head. So just taking a look, right, now of
course changes in plane in a lot of ways
you can consider to some degree arbitrary. Right? Like I've
decided that this is the major change. At times it's very
obvious. At times that
is a change in plane. Other times though it could be a
little to the right a little, you know, little off that
particular one. So this is kind of where that exploration comes
in.
And you know as I'm doing this, kind of I'm thinking a lot in
straight lines because in that sense, it's what we've been
working on up to this point, not really doing too much on
curves,
but now,
right, but these straight lines are important, right,
because these straight lines are going to give us the plane.
Right, that line
before it becomes another line, different angle already
signifies the plane. I just happened to be including
some of these changes in plane right on top of the
of the things I already have on the page.
Whereas unlike the Asaro planar head in our head.
here, it's up to us to find where these planes are. So just
take your time
and follow along.
Right, some of these lines, some of these that I'm putting down
not always signify a plane but signify
a change in -
I mean a change in plane, but they are going along
a curvature.
So I'm thinking of the changes of plane along the vertical
axis, but also along the horizontal.
And I'm spending time on the most important part, which is I mean
above the eye, strangely enough, right? It's not - the
eye itself it's something something too.
to think about but it's not the core of of this, it's these
forms on top that will really begin to matter when we get
into anatomy.
But you know, you don't forget the eye itself, right, the upper
eyelid and all that stuff I mean, so maybe I should figure
out a way to refer to all of this. So maybe the eye with a
small e is the eye and the eye with a big E is the whole cast.
I don't know.
The problem with this was if I was writing this that's one
thing but
I have to
that means I have to every time say whether it's capital or
not. I think it's just more confusing. So yeah, but see
take your time, see as you can already tell my mind is
wandering a bit as I'm refining these things. I am I'm refining these things. I am
I am introducing a tiny bit - like I'm kind of combining both
of those approaches. I mentioned earlier I am
introducing a tiny bit of some of the shadows that I
see as you can see this line right here is the cast. The cast
shadow on top of the upper eyelid.
But mainly because it helps me see the proportions, not because
I'm truly analyzing what the form is at the moment.
In terms of light and shadow, that's what I'm talking that that's what I'm talking
about. I am analyzing the form but not in terms of light and
shadow.
All right, so -
and you end up, you see more and more, you end up using both
approaches, that you always end up like all the things that I
talked about and I see this more and more and the more I
teach -
the more I teach, the more I realize that whenever I say
anything I already have come up with multiple exceptions to a
rule that I
have posited.
So I think that's the -
so yeah, so just keep in mind
maybe in the context of what I'm talking about right now
there is a right and wrong
but it's not as clear
in the long run, you know,
what's right and what's wrong, and what's the right way to
start a drawing and what's the wrong way.
I'm giving you a way that I think will be helpful. And I
think that you can then
build upon
the inner corner of the eye, also the tear duct. Something to
think about, you know, I'll mention a couple of like,
you know, some things that maybe you have slightly more
specific anatomical terminology, but
not going to go over overboard with it.
Excellent, so
okay. So now I can see that the eye is sort of a
place. I'm beginning to get just a general semblance of
what the
changes are, right, what the changes are in
curvature.
This part right here for example was
kind of along that plane, it's sort of a parallel
to the plane of the whole cast. Then you can see that these
planes begin to turn under.
And here too, right, we can cut into here too, right,
this begins to turn in and under.
And the hardest part is actually in here, right?
Because this is almost flat and begins to curve underneath and
over.
This comes down like so,
comes across and this begins to go and move up a bit.
So the eye itself though is the interesting part right? Because
the eyes round and it's in here.
We're not really thinking about the eye as a - what the form of the
eye is and then adding the eyelids on top as much but it
might be helpful from a standpoint of what the
structures are, right, you have the
the eyeball itself, which is a sphere and then you have these,
you essentially have a sphere on top of it, look, a half
sphere. Right here.
And that's
a very simplified sort of understanding of what the
form of this is.
But we can put it in there. We can lay it down on the page, right,
get that. So it's not just the upper lid. There's also
this area right that comes off of the eye. It's the
thickness of the upper lid and there's also one - and it's going
to always be in shadow because it's a down plane - and then
the same thing is happening with the
lower eyelid, which will for the most part always
be if our lights from above always be a light plane because
it's facing up.
So yeah, so I'm kind of -the problem with this sort of
constructive approach though, as you can see, is that you end
up getting a little bit lost. I myself am getting lost so a
way to solve this is to now begin to think
in shadows, thinking in principles
of light and shadow,
which we know and we can get - we get to reinforce right now. So
I'm going to begin right from the area closest to our light is
our lights from above and squint and begin to lay in the
terminator,
right, the advantage of thinking
in the way that we are
thinking is that it's not - like it removes a bit of
the challenge in a way.
Like there are objects that are more complicated.
Some people would say like how do you even get more
complicated than the eye?
And of course the eye is just a part of the head so the head
has a other parts that are equally
complicated, which we're going to go over
and practice.
And I think that -
but having a structural kind of understanding -
and by structural and this case, I mean having a
procedural understanding of how you can approach something
kind of minimizes
the anxiety a little bit, right, like it's often and I have this
too, right, you're approaching like an idea or objects or
just, you know, something on the page that is
kind of complicated so you don't know if you will succeed
or not. So that point to just get into it. You can rely on
what you already know, how to do and see how well it applies and
then you're already in it, you're already thinking about it in
the right way and then if you see that there's something in
the way that you're thinking about all this that is -
that maybe is not entirely helpful, then you can
begin to alter it and make modifications to the procedure
itself. But having that is quite
something so see I'm putting in the terminator here on the
brow and also moving
kind of down here and just figuring the mass of what is
now the cast shadow.
It'd be nice to end the form though. So
the terminator's here, right, but then we need to actually need to
end the form itself and the core shadow
itself.
So now you're kind of carving into that mass of
shadow.
In order to then make sure there is a clear
distinction between the core shadow, the terminator, core
shadow, reflected light, cast shadow, right? All
those things now, of course, we're encountering a
lot of different things, this right here is more like
just a cube, angles things like this, but right here, right the
upper eyelid is right up here.
And then sort of ends and you have this cast shadow.
You have this cast shadow from the upper eyelid onto the
the eyeball, the entirety of
the eyeball and you can see it. This is harder to see on a real
human eye. So I'm glad you're practicing on a cast
right? You can see that soft cast shadow that we know so
well from our assignments with the
Simon's with the
geometric forms,
right, the softer the curve, the softer the terminator. And here
we go right here I don't think breaking it up into planes is
helpful. And that's what we get there and now
the hard part is this -what I'm doing now that tiny cast shadow
from the eyeball
onto the lower eyelid.
And then of course the terminator
on the lower eyelid
actually followed by a tiny little cast shadow because
there's a little bit of an
area that it's kind of a ridge
and then now the full core shadow also soft curvature
right get a feeling for that entirety of that curve of the
eyeball inside and underneath right? So here like from above,
all of this is terminator.
Out of the way to think of this is to think of the whole thing
as a sphere.
And then begin to lay in your shadows a little bit, right, so
that you just - it's not even about at this point. It's just
try to avoid some of this confusion like clear things up
by making sure you see your lights, your shadows, work within
those shadows a little bit,
and just let's get them in place, right?
And right now don't make too many distinctions between cast
and core in terms of value. of value.
Just going to even this out with -
smear it a little, get a little bit softer so that I don't get
those hatch marks
in the way and get all -
but at the moment see I am erasing that -
the light on the lower eyelid. I'm erasing it because Iof
course in reality I squint and I can see that it's a darker
value than say some of these things but, right, we're
following the procedure which means that all our lights are
left as light as the page itself.
All right, so, I think we're getting somewhere I think we're getting somewhere
though. I think something's happening.
I think something is happening. And now I'm going to just make
sure, right, don't forget that we're thinking of the entirety of the
cast, the block of the cast, the eye with the capital I - capital
e, my goodness.
Don't overdo it though. We don't need that to be the main
contrast.

Hmm. Okay, so now but see it's already - even looking at
what I have here. I think it's as is even a slightly -like you're
enhancing these structural components.
So I think what's important now is to get a little more precise
with the terminator.
Right, ignore the eyebrow, right? You can see individual
little cuts in there and kind of imitations of hair and
all this. Ignored it entirely. We're thinking mainly of the
construction
so things like that will either come at the end or not at all
and they're fine.
It's fine if we don't have them.
So now it's that sharp edge, right, that sharp or
soft edge depending on what you're doing of the
terminator.
And as you see the terminator,
by hatching the terminator
and kind of
playing with that hard or soft edge, seeing where that
change of plane is more of an edge or where it's more of a
sort of a softer, calmer curvature. That is the -
that's already kind of inching us towards the half-tones.
On the Asaro planar head right we didn't have
that to worry about that except for maybe on some of the planes
that already had a little bit of curvature, but we could just
establish that terminator as a line and then move directly
into the half tones from there.
Now
here we don't have that luxury.
We have to explore how soft or hard the move from shadow to
light is,
how immediate it is or
how abrupt it is I'll also say sometimes. Okay. So right now
you can see that this right here is a change of plane, it's
already falling into shadow, meaning if this is this part
that I'm working on or if this is the terminator this is the
core and I believe that there must be a cast here and the
cast is a darker value and a sharper edge.
Right. I think that that looks fine.
Let's keep going.
Now
it depends on your sort of
artistic and educational experience but there's a
chance you've encountered the cast eye
and the other features before and
they're a great learning tool and you can see this, you can
see how great of a learning tool is because it's used in
teaching every academic approach, even the ones that
seemingly don't relate to one another and yet they rely - the
schools rely on
these casts.
So there's something in them that is rather universal.
I'm going to place the iris, right, the
colored part of the eye. I will not overstate it though.
And now you remember of course the rules, the one rule
if we're going to talk about rules, is that everything can be
changed at any time, don't hesitate to make corrections.
It's more important that you figure out what the correction
is. I for example, I could just get these, the opening
between the eyelids, a little bit
smaller, I had to move this up right here. And that was
something that I understood proportionately
based entirely on the -
based entirely on the height of the the book the height of the
shadow.
So when thinking about proportions and all that, you
know, there's a lot of things that can guide you
towards making the correct thing. So what I'm doing now is
the interesting thing here, right, is this right here is the
edge of the cash shadow, but it's not actually that sharp.
We could sharpen it for effect. It will read more like a
shadow, but there's something about softness, which is
helping even just define that curvature. So
I'm down with that.
So yeah, make sure right, go in and figure out
what this edge is because remember what I was talking
about earlier, that every sort of obvious change of plane
along this cut, like the cut of the cast, imagine just
cutting it out of the original sculpture,
gives you the change in plane, right? So you could extend this
out and have a somewhat
better understanding of what's going on there. Maybe that's a
little too specific for what we need right here, but it's
definitely what we need -what we need on top.
Now this is the important part, right, because it's tilted. I
actually get a little bit of the bottom plane.
Gonna go in here to refine a little bit more of that lower
eyelid.
And the key is that you can see how sharp this lower edge is,
it's cast shadow, so don't be
swayed by the
changes in edge.
And simply place them as edge, right, understand what
they're for. This is a fairly sharp edge of a terminator
clearly, because it's an abrupt change in plane. And then you
should probably enhance the fact that this underneath
is core shadow and then a shadow is not just a sharp edge
or even a line. It has an area right? It's the change of
plane from here onto this plane underneath the eye, it's being
vast from the eyelid on to the forms down here.
Okay, so let's move on.
I'm still not getting into the -
what ere they called, the half tones, the lights.
Not getting into those just making sure to get as
much correct as possible.
Here now, of course, the interesting part is
that just like proportions
are corrected with the help of shadows,
a similar thing happens
with the proportions of the shadows themselves. They will
be corrected with the half tones.
Now if that sounds a tiny bit confusing,
we have sort of discussed it a little bit and I keep coming
back to it. But that's something you understand more
and more as you practice, right you realize that you rely on
the steps in the process that you haven't
reached yet to correct the ones that aren't yet completed.
But I'm not going to elaborate on that any further because I
feel like I will just confuse you guys and myself.
Ah, look at that. That's fun. Right. So this right here I
actually made that mistake that I was just talking about.t The
eye itself, like the eyeball, ends right here.
This is already the plane
of the lower eyelid, the the top plane.
And that's a fun thing because that sharp edge makes it seem
as though this is just one continuous line. But see
that's what's happening.
I'm exaggerating a little bit. It's a little
harder to see in life. But that's why I do come up to the
thing, zoom in, you know take your time with the with these
things.
So now this is a sculpture of course and the eyes are like
the iris
is sculpted with that by carving in the iris,
right, carving in that edge.
And the pupil
it also cut in.
There are a number of different approaches to how to just to
sculpt an eye, right because it's hard to like it needs to
create the effect of the eye, not so much
show the proper curvature of the sort of optics of the like
the objective, like the proper curvatures needed for
the eye to be a functional element. So you essentially
just need to create with sculpture the proper light and
shadow and like imitate the color almost. In this case, right the
iris is signified
as sort of just by being cut around and then by being cut around and then
the pupil is carved in
and you could see there's that little indentation here,
which is interesting, right, because the pupil is just
round. But if you imagine that right, what does that remind
you of? Everything here catches light, the upper part
right, I'm just drawing the pupil as
it should be but then this indentation catches light,
meaning it acts like a highlight. Isn't that clever? I
definitely think it is now.
But it has its own, you know, has its own terminator on the
edge, of course, then core shadow and then a little bit of
that cast shadow which is what's defined the lower edge of that
kind of butterfly
outline.
We're not going to get too caught up in it though. It's
not that important.
Now it'd be nice to get a feeling for where the real end
of the
upper eyelid is.
I'm standing real close now because I'm kind of working on
small form changes and all that.
Okay that in there,
that's the upper eyelid, but
let's not forget that cast shadow, right. I'm just going all. Right just I'm just going
to reinforce it again. If you're trying to get a shadow
to work, to look like a shadow, then it needs to be -
it needs to have all those components of shadow.
But it's really defining, right, that line right here
defines this.
But that becomes the cast shadow not just on the eyeball itself,
but also on the lower
eyelid.
I have this fancy eraser. It has a nice edge to it. That might
be good for really carving in a little bit, right. Here you got
to be just a little more precise with stuff
and just the lines, I'm kind of adding a little bit more of a
curve there. You know, it's interesting and I'm sure
you've heard of it, right, this whole idea that every time you
draw a portrait
it looks a little bit like you, that whole thing. but that whole thing.
And yeah, I think that that, with experience, that goes away
but I'm not sure it ever really goes away all the way . There's
always some part and maybe with the whole head it changes, but
I'm even seeing this right now. Like adding this curvature
is much closer to my eye
and the kind of curve that I'm just used to like, you know,
I see when I look
in the mirror and all that stuff. So like you end up even
not just on the proportions of the head that make it look
like the person but also on a much smaller scale.
Like we're doing just the eye. From a cast even not even
another person.
So I think we're getting somewhere though. The shadows are
pretty much in place.
Remember where gonna go back into them.
Mainly because they're probably lighter than they need to be.
But what's very important here
is to now move into
the
half tones which are kind of the fun part and what the real
challenge here is and what we're really really is and what we're really
practicing.
So I will use a slightly - so depending on the pencil that
you're using, I was using 2B for everything here, right? be for everything here, right?
It's not so soft that it's just all over the place and
you can't control it but it's not so hard that it's -you can't
get the right value and it just cuts the paper. So I'm going to
switch to something a little bit softer though.
I have an HB here. I'm curious if that'll do the trick, right,
switching towards the half tones.
And I'm going to - like we've broken down some of these
changes in plane and we're going to do the same thing that
we did - this is maybe hmm, maybe a little bit too, you
know, maybe a
little bit too much. How is this F.
F is the weird one. I'm going to use this
awesome sharpener.
And yes because I'm just playing around this is a great
sharpener that actually sharpens pencils to kind of the
specifications that I
I like when I do it with a knife.
So just testing it out.
As with all sharpeners, they do sort of eat up pencils, but
look at that.
So
I'm going to -
I think the F is fine. I'm surprised about the F
because it's not you know, H, or B or any of that, its own its
own thing that's in between the two and I never understood the
point.
They could just adjust the whole thing a bit, right? It
should just be very clear
but maybe the hardness or softness of the pencil is
locked in and they needed something in between so they
just added an F. Who knows? I'm sure
you can maybe find this out somewhere.
So
similar thing, right, what we did I kind of - this is the
important part. Before I just lay in a half tone I outline
it, right. The important part about half tones
that we
have discussed but always important to go over again is
the same thing as
the idea with the highlight, right? It's not simply a
value without a clear
end, there's usually like it has edges, much it has it has it has edges much
like the terminator has edges and those edges depend on the
curvature of the form.
All right, so isn't that already like a lovely thing?
It's already turning it out into the half tones
there. I'm focusing here because that's a darker half tone.
I'm always focusing on the on the darkest half tones starting
there and then building up towards our lights.
Here too, interesting, right we go up to here and then down.
And just as a big plane.
See already what's beginning to happen. Already we're
getting
a turn of the form.
Now what's interesting is
just to take a nice measurement. This line is
actually right here. So right, make a mistake, you leave it for
a while, then you find it afterwards. That's the interesting
part, right? So the hard part is getting everything right,
but you think, but you don't need to. You just need to get it
close enough that you register it as okay.
And then as you approach it again, you kind of approach it
with a critical eye. That's the only thing.
Approach it with a critical eye in order to
just every mark that's already already on the page you
then have to go back and ask yourself, well, is that
really where it is?
Right now we can see how the hatching exercises earlier on,
particularly the ones where you needed to have just an abstract
sort of outline and then hatching within that outline,
how that assignment comes into play here because you can see
I'm using the hatch but it's not about the hatch or
about where they cross or how or how accurately, it's about
where they end. It's creating a plane with the
hatch.
And then, you know, you kind of move back and forth
a little bit. Yeah, I'm getting back into the terminator. The
interesting thing here though
is what's going on
with this plane, right? I mentioned that this is all
going in and then under.
That's really important. That's really important to figure out
because that is essentially your core shadow, right? That's
not the change of plane yet. Already when there's that
break in that plane.
So regardless of what you see, right, this is now
the real
the real
analytical part of it. See I place it on the page in that
way and already begins to read core shadow and cast shadow,
meaning there's a proper change of plane.
Is it exactly there? No, and I'm going to
carve into that. And we've encountered this, we've
encountered this that at times
there's just ambient light in the room. It's not perfectly
isolated and often you don't want it to because you don't
want to end up just copying, you want to analyze, see what the
change is and then apply those rules.
Alrighty, so
let's keep - let's keep at it.
See and of course always happens, right, you're in your
views. You think you've moved on to those half tones,
but already you place one half tone in and it's telling you
something's wrong with the shadow right next to it. So you
go back to the shadow, you correct it, and then you move
back.
Which I personally think is a much more interactive and
like much more engaging way to think about things, much more
interesting way to analyze.
It works.
It's not blindly following a formula.
Which is not what you want ever.
Of course some of those structural lines at the
beginning, at the beginning that you place to
figure where stuff out is you just, you know, you can erase
and make sure they still read but now with just changes in
value and all that.
So I'm pretty much carving the brow here into very
distinct planes, right. Our light for the most part is here. So
you can already see that every plane that's turned toward that
light is going to be a lighter value.
So that's the important bit here, right? We can kind of
almost right away establish
this plane right here, that one, as the brightest plane in this
eye.
And
then
move down from there. Of course, maybe some highlights
that you can see right here that are really happening on it
like a very sharp particular indentation, that of course will
be maybe a bit lighter, but we will figure that out when we
get there.
In the meantime, let's just leave that light and kind of
place that little bit of a shade on the one in the middle.
Because it's already turned from there,
already turned from there and see I'm ignoring those like bumps
and things like that because I don't think that they're
helping you analyze and see the larger changes in form.
Okay, let's see. Let's see what we got here.
I did say ignore the eyebrow. And of
course, I meant those individual little cuts, where
the eyebrow is created by a protrusion on the -
coming off of the brow, then of course it's a larger
change in plane and needs to be considered.
Here though, it's half tone. It hasn't turned enough yet to
fall into shadow.
Let's erase this line too and figure out what's going on
there based on
just using value, right? This is already kind of turning in,
this plane is the closest to that one in a sense. It's the
closest to the ones that are turning to our right.

There are some things which are very very small, right, like this
bit of light right here.
But it's all half tone right, but that kind of slight it, but that kind of slight
there's like a
some tiny little form being pulled out there.
Let's include it. Why not now at the same time, right? You
don't have to get them all one in place right away. You can
just sort of block some areas, like I'm doing or you can go
and be as direct and specific as possible,
of course
with experience you just become more direct and
specific.
Because I think it's actually interesting to
like in the future attempt a different approach. For example
maybe drawing a cast starting from just one tiny area in the
cast and expanding from there. Academically that's wrong and
because academically you're always thinking from the sort
of like you're becoming more specific, you're starting at the -
starting far away and arriving at those details as
you go,
but I think once you've practiced that for a long
enough,
you can attempt to
to see if you can still preserve that
while
exploring what seems like a new technique in the end and
here's the idea behind it is actually the same thing.
It's the same thing because you start with the specifics
but in your mind you keep the whole.
But once again, I feel like I just add things that confuse -
might confuse you so we're not doing that here. We did start
out as
broadly as possible and we're kind of inching
towards the details.
Keep in mind I'm not really worried too much about the
the half tones that are really - really
that are already sort of like, you know closer to highlights.
Not too concerned with those.
And you can see that just by doing some of the stuff that
I'm doing here,
by sort of pulling
out a few of these things,
by making sure that there are particular changes that are
more obvious maybe.
Making the more obvious in the page than they are in real life
already like
gives the drawing a greater feeling
of
roundness and
structure.
That's the word we come back to all the time, right?
Now I'm just going to get into this
iris a little bit, right, but keep in mind that it's a
cut, right, so the cut as with any with any cut
enlarged
it looks like this, right?
Which means that if our lights here, that's your terminator,
that's your core shadow.
Depending on where the light is, let's say that's your cast
shadow
and that's your general half tone and that's your general
half tone. So in a sense this - right here is your highlight.
So that's the way that you can
show what that cut is and we'll encounter that a little
bit more - actually a lot more quite soon of quite soon.
when we work on cloth.
This is all cloth is.
All right. See so I'm just kind of a erasing
that a little bit.
Don't overstate it, though.
Don't overstate it, though.
Now
we're still just breaking down the planes, right? So it's sort
of some of these half tones are a little repetitive but they're
all kind of the same. You can see the form beginning to
appear and that's good, but we're going to have to get
larger changes in
order for them to really work. So
do pay close attention to what's happening with the
changes in the
the lower eyelid, right, do make sure this reads
because it's not only turning like this, it's turning like
this which is right, it begins to - so if I draw this, right,
this is - but this begins to turn under
or like
a bit more that's aware of a way to show this is
flatter
and then this begins to turn under, under, and
under as well. So it's a complicated - it's a form that's
complicated. There's a twist there
so do watch out for it.
Ah see a similar thing what I was talking about here , zooming
in and really figure out
where
the eyelid ends and where the cast shadow is.
A similar thing what happened right there, same thing's
happening down here and it makes sense because these
curvatures
are
in accordance with one another.
But now that I've moved into this darker half tone, the same
thing has to begin to happen
with the lower eyelid as well, right, because your thinking of
this whole thing as
a sphere.
Make sure that cast shadow reads.
Okay. Okay, not bad. Let's keep moving.
The thickness of the lower eyelid at the outer corner
is already turning in such a way that it's
clearly a
half tone, maybe even -
no a half tone. That is quite a dark value.
Right so you want to show that.
There's actually tiny bit of highlight on that edge, but
we'll get there. We'll get there eventually.
Okay. So where are we here? Clearly we've done a lot on
top.
I don't want to get into like piece-by-piece analyzing each
of the smaller areas. Not in the - not just yet, right so you
can see all that's happening above. So something like that,
right, so we can then get to carve into
that a little bit. There's a - you can see the changes of the
plane above.
Little bit more of this but we will get into this, we will
add that bit of polish. And notice that that's what I mean
by polish. It's not tiny details. It's just the same
approach
to figuring out what the changes in plane are, what all
of like all of that is but just on a smaller scale. It's kind
of zooming in but doing the same thing.
Okay, so
I'm going to take a look from underneath just a little bit,
just to get an idea of what's happening here right?
There's this big curvature here. It's doing something like
that. We've laid it out a little.
Now our light, right, we can see it. This plane
turned towards the light and then this plane right here,
which is already kind of reaching into the planes of the -
but kind of you can see that big bright light right there.
Right? This is the form of the nose is also
beginning - it's turned, it's close to that plane
in its orientation towards the light, so clearly this right
here is going to be a bit lighter. So just follow the
direction of the light and things will be clear. At the same time
there is some variation here, right because our highlight is
essentially is on the intersection of planes. So this
area is going to be a bit brighter than everything here
in general, but
we can't overdo this so I could otherwise it would
just be a little bit confusing. So I'm just going to lay in
kind of a general half tone there, clean this up. They're clean this up.
Get a little bit of a general half tone right there.
And then you can see from this crease -
let's just call it a line - from this line the - of course, it's a
crease. It's a form in space. There are no lines, lines are
two-dimensional.
That begins this
just break down what the planes are doing, that becomes this
kind of the - there was a plane that's facing away from the
light, meaning it's going to be in a darker halftone, not turned
enough or not enough of a relief to fall into shadow.
But still there. Now
you can see now that I've added some tone on the bottom. It's getting
a little repetitive, right, because I'm thinking of changes
in plane,
not so much comparing one value to another, of course, some of
the darker half tones are clear
and clearly darker than some of the lighter ones. But all the
lighter ones are kind of the same and all the darker ones are
kind of the same. We're going to need to go back into this
and explore
how we can pull them apart a little bit.
Now this is interesting right here, right? This is a nice bit
of curve of the lower eyelid towards the light again, but in
order to show it, all of this needs to be
a little bit of a darker
half tone.
So it's all a little more - just a
gentle curve, so we're not going to get too planar.
But it's still there.
So you can see the interesting thing about it, like if you
really think about it, something kind of looks constructive when
the planes are clear
but the general sort of feeling of light and shadow in terms of
what's closer to the light, just being lighter value because
it's closer to the light, right, this kind of a fall off of
light all that's ignored. And we just - we cover that a little
bit, we're going to be covering it more and more. So
it's more - even while we are working
in light values and darker
sort of
areas and stuff like this, the idea is that we're not ,at the idea is that we're not at
the moment, at the moment, focusing on
the sort of the quality of light is something that
introduces mood, atmosphere, environment. We're focusing on
it only to the extent that it helps with the structure and
enhancing the structure and allowing us to see it and all
that.
We will of course,
after we make sure that these structures read, kind of push it
a little bit towards the,
I don't know what's the word,
definitely this isn't naturalistic, but we will push
it a little bit towards something that it is in fact a
little bit more just observed, get a feeling of
light, getting a feeling for the environment,
it won't be much and it also won't be hard to web but also won't be hard to
do after the fact, after we've established where our planes
are.
I think it's time to kind of get these things a
little more organic. Right? And all you need to do is just to
erase those lines.
Erase those lines.
Just let
kind of right, I need to get this a little bit of a darker
value
to make that highlight read, to get that change of plane to read.
Now of course my biggest problem now and my biggest
concern
is that this is too light of course and we'll definitely get to
that soon.
I just need to get a little bit more clarity in these
overall proportions, overall structures,
right, maybe moving in and correcting some of these
outlines.
Okay. Okay. Okay at the moment I like where this is, but I
feel like I need to kind of approach this with a critical
eye. And so let's take a break. Always take a break whenever
you feel like you need to
simply to give your eyes a chance to relax and then when
you come back to it, you're able to see mistakes more
clearly and all that. So let's take a break from this, come
back, and then begin focusing on the smaller changes in
plane and the larger feeling of light.

Okay. So now that we've taken a few moments to allow our eyes
to relax a little bit, let's get back and and see what we
can add to what we have.
Okay, so
let's
go into some of these these changes
within some of the larger planes that we've already established.
Right, kind of just begin carving into them. We're still
not too concerned
with larger changes, right, with a larger changes of light as it
kind of
moves all across the form.
Keep in mind we're not interested in
a super polished
kind of - this isn't about polish, that's what I'm trying
to say. This is not about
having something that's completed in that particular
understanding of the term, right? It's not about
organizing
everything here
and making sure that there's - you know that every
tiny little part that we can actually see is transferred
onto the page. What we're interested in
is an analysis
of the form
and especially of the forms that are larger than the ones
that are kind of - that are giving us the structural
aspects of this, that are creating this.
If you omit some of the smaller details, it
won't be the end of the world.
You of course can make the argument that you know,
Michelangelo intended for even the smallest
elements be a part
of the -
to play into the larger ones. And I'm go I'm pretty sure
that is the case actually.
But he did intend
for there to not be anything that's superfluous. That
everything has a place, a roll.
But we can simplify it further.
And yet at the same time right, do a little bit of a crease.
It's nice to practice some of these things
we spoke about on the eyebrow here, right, kind of carve in a
little bit more.
Just a little bit.
If you missed a few
once again it won't be the end of the world.
It's a great time to practice your hatch, too.
So here too, right,I'm beginning - what helps me with the larger
form, this is coming back to what I was just saying about
Michelangelo, and it's -you can see some of these half tones
that are made even clearer because of the creases ,right?
So that's where the largest - the small form plays into the large
form. Now, of course, be careful, right because you get
kind of carried away, overwhelmed with
the details and they take away, they actually sort of
disrupt that feeling of unity.
Kind of still into that eyebrow a little bit, right?
Making sure the curve those forms a little bit.
And always step away, right, always step away from what
you're looking at because you want to -
you want to get a feeling for the whole, right? If you're
standing up here all the time as you're
modeling a small area that's all good. But you lose sight of
what that area is in the context of the whole. So don't
ever -
don't hesitate to move, right? This is why I prefer standing
because it's just easier, you know, you don't have to get up
off of a chair and move back and then get back on and be
comfortable again. You're always moving around and you
can count that as part of your exercise for the day, I guess.
I'm getting back into that big area of shadow.
Knocking it
back in a little bit.
And begin to curve this in a little, right, but remember
what we're after right? We're after the feeling that this
right here is the core shadow
and reflected light.
Everything underneath is cast shadow. So that's the other
thing, right? This is a cast, meaning there is no color
and we're not thinking of what potentially what the -
like what the tonal equivalent of that color is. So
you might in order to make this read like a cast, read
colorless,
a lot of the times you lose that when the half tones are
overworked.
And a way to return to this is to just make your shadows just
a little bit darker.
We've encountered that before.
Right, if at times a hatch just needs to have a certain energy
and if that happens to fall off of the object, right, off of the
edge, that's fine.
Still working on that eyebrow just a little bit, right, that's
sort of the hard part.
Hard or maybe just annoying.
Though it all depends on like on you right, like you might
have a proclivity
for details and you're interested in
getting in there and now is the time.
Or you might be kind of a person who's not as interested
who wants to just keep going over the larger forms.
This right here is interesting because this is really clearly
the one of the brightest areas, the most protruding part, angled
towards the light as we discussed. So
that little bit of a tone on top is going to help show that
protrusion just that bit more. And of course it's enhanced a
little, those changes aren't as clear in the cast.
And now of course, what was just once a line, we can carve in
again. I think we can break it down even further.
We can break it down even further and begin to kind of
to carve
more and more into some of these things.
Right, small form modeling.
Now interestingly enough, right, this right here is now the new
plane break, right? This was going to be the brightest area.
Because our highlight, right, the highlight is always on the
change of plane. It's never on the plane.
So this one right here
now needs to be just toned down, just that slight
amount.
Mmm-hmm, but I'm losing it a little, I'm looking
at all this and and yes, I'm sort of happy with some of
that structural form on top, happy with
the way I'm working in those half tones, but I'm losing
those large relationships.
Which is great because
now I get to kind of place them
a little more broadly. Just a little bit more
broadly.
You notice I'm almost using this area above the eye,
the eyebrow and the brow itself. I'm using it hour itself. I'm using it
actually as
kind of just to get the point across, right? That's more what
this exercise is about than the eye itself.
Now keep in mind when you do come back to eye will become
maybe a little more important because it will be sort of
something to learn in the connection to with
placing it on a head, in a portrait. So that is something
to think about and we're going to get to the eye itself but
this analysis of the form going from something organic
in life to something
planar on the page and then reconverting it on the page and
into something organic again is what this exercise is about and
what
most of us about really.
Switching to a pencil that's even harder.
Now as an exercise of course I spoke about it before that
at times you want to not switch, right? You want to just
try to get as much variation from the pencil,
you know, whichever pencil you have as you can so not to
switch to a harder or softer pencil based on whether you're working on
shadows or lights or whatnot.
But I think in this case, right, some of these changes in value
are so slight
that it's just that much more helpful and easier to control
and also there's a slightly different quality to a harder
graphite, just how it lays on the page and the more variation
you get with that the better I think.
Now I'm squinting and this is bright but clearly I'm not as
bright as this. So it needs just a general kind of a wash of a
tone, just a wash.
Just that bit of a wash.
Okay, but at the same time, not reading this terminator is
is
moving into the dark half tones not fast enough. So I'm just
going to kind of turn that form a little bit more.
Okay, that's good. That's good. I like what I'm seeing there.
Switching back to the 2B for a second, right, just to get - now
what I see there is of course a little bit different than what -
you have to move down to really see - this right here inside is an it this right here inside is an
occlusion shadow if I move.
So what I'm going to do is invert what I'm seeing kind of
like what I did here.
All right, make sure that cast shadow is a dark enough value.
Make sure that terminator is a dark enough value, but make
sure that that area underneath it
is lighter to make room
for that reflected light. Alright, that's always the part
that we're talking about here.
So much more clarity there. Also, you can see that I've
accented this, this becomes just a slightly darker value than
anything up here.
And that is quite good because
that's actually more to do with the eye, right, the eyes kind
of need to be a little - they don't need to be an accent, but they often
are and a way to do it is to just make them just a little
bit of a darker value.
Now what I truly want to do is really clean up that cast shadow.
All right, I'm going to come real close and use an eraser to
sharpen up that edge,
can get the upper eyelid totally white
just to make sure that that shadow reads and then I'm going
to begin to turn that form of the upper eyelid. Just going to
move it from the darker half tones, just round ,move
it towards the brightest spot. I'm getting to it right now.
It's right here.
That's the brightest spot.
And then of course it turns a little more more now, we're turning away
from the light. So we got to tone it down just a bit, just a
bit.
And then
it turns out again, right, so there's a little bit, that
upper eyelid it kind of gets - there's a fair bit of
complexity there.
The move, this terminator up here too, right? I'm just going
to move everything.
Oh, there we go. That's now the new terminator or it was the
old one, but I lost it
and then
we move it down to there.
For an area like this where they are very very small changes,
leaving too much of the texture of the pencil
can get a little bit more confusing, right? It could just
add that - there's a bit of confusion there because it
creates a texture and doesn't allow you to read the values as
clearly. So you want to
make sure that you have control over that, so
that's why I recommend sort of smoothing it out a little bit.
See like and now I'm establishing the upper eyelid,
the light, that under plane underneath it, and then the cast
shadow from that onto the eyeball itself.
And in some places, simply actually kind of maybe more for
effect than anything else.
Oh, that's fun.
Even more for effect than anything else
you maybe want to combine
the core shadow and cast shadow.
For effect and variation.
All right, that's beginning to read rounder to me.
Right the thing is that you have to kind of look at it
as the, in a sense the illusion that it is, right. You need to
question yourself how how precise is that illusion? How
convincing is it
first and foremost to you?
And then you go from there.
All right. Now it's time to treat that height. I'll get
back to some of the stuff on top of what I'm what I want.
Now
just a general
value on the eyeball.
Keep in mind that the angle here is inwards. The upper
eyelid is closer to us than the lower one.
And that of course
needs to be shown and so the but more importantly understood
that the eye itself, based on its opening,
once again not getting too much into the anatomy, is
at this
kind.
of an angle.
Okay,
so that's the thing that you need to always be aware of.
The ball is in here, but the eye is not so
the common error is this, that the eye
in reality
let's say
it's more like this.
This is of course maybe a little more exaggerated, but
that's the idea.
All right. We're back at it. Let's see.
Squinting a little bit more and making sure
they get
this eye in there, right? It's not going to catch as much light if
it's in generally looking downwards.
Now notice what I'm losing.
I'm losing a little bit of that terminator, but hopefully we
get it back.
I mean
it's interesting I said hopefully, right, at though it's
not in my control.
There it is. Coming back.
Now time to figure out what to do with some of this, right, just
make sure it's dark enough, but maybe not overpowering right?
It is a hole in the cast, kind of an indentation but you
don't want it to be a hole in the paper.
If you know what I mean. I don't mean actual hole in the
paper but I mean something that reads like a hole in the paper.
So everything needs to be within a particular tonal
range.
If that makes sense.
My teachers
would kill me
if they see me sharpening with this sharpener, and I
myself am
very annoying I think when it comes to telling the students
to learn to sharpen by hand, but I did show you how to do
it.
And
so, you know, but this is, this does happen to be an
exceptional sharpener.
Same little bit of light there. Right, none of these things
are sharp. So that that ridge is going to be a little bit
softer.
Even this highlight highlight is not as bright, the whole eye.
really just look at not that bright.
now of these, the eye happens to be one of the sort of the
hardest ones,
but also the most popular one, right, like there's also the
lips and
and the nose as well and we're going to be working on those too.
The other ones aren't as popular in the sense that I
haven't seen them
worked on to the same extent as the eye
and
in a way, I think they're also
yeah, okay, let's
I don't know what I was going to say with that. Let's scratch
that. I'm just going to keep working.
All right, so.
All right. So the eye now is the value that we needed here. I
think more or less and by the eye I mean the eyeball. in the eyeball.
And then of course, there's a little bit of confusion
when it comes to the lower eyelid and that highlight, right,
that highlight is in between the eyeball and the
lower lid.
So it's important to clean that out, use the eraser if you want,
right, to make sure they're on the page
and then kind of begin to carve around it, be careful right as
this requires a little more precision.
Not
that much more but a little bit more. It's a small highlight
that kind of lasts a while that
moves along the form for a while.
Make sure that
cash shadow reads
nice and sharp. Add a dark value.
I do realize though that I've sort of opened up this eye a
little bit more.
I have to tell you I think it reminds me of tiny bit more of
the original sculpture
than this cast.
I think the eye in reality maybe has a little bit more is maybe has a little bit more
volume and I think we're getting that here. It's good.

All right. So the inner corner of the eye - sorry outer corner
of the eye is proving just a tiny bit tricky. So we just
need to spend some time on it, right, just need to get into
there,
make sure it works, and then make sure that highlight reads
right? It's got that outline.
And then kind of begin to carve in from the other side.
This is an important component, right? It's the form here
matters,
especially because the lower eyelid has that ridge, that lip.
So we need to get into there and make sure that ridge
and that's already really small form modeling but
the lower eyelid, yeah that's one of the more important parts of the
eye.
Clean that up a little bit.
So the eraser got a little bit of a smudge on it. A way to
actually clean that up is to use - notice what I'm doing using the notice what I'm doing using
a razor blade just kind of removing,
it's kind of scratching off the paper a tiny bit too, but it
cleans up some of those. Don't overdo it or else you end up
with a very - a sheet of paper that's actually quite damaged.
You don't want to overdo it but you know
there are times
when these things help.
Now
there's that lip, right? The highest point of that lip is
going to be essentially the highlight. Now, is it a bright
highlight? No. No, it isn't, but it's still a highlight in
relation to the values around it.
So that lip of course becomes much more prominent as we get
closer to the terminator.
Much more prominent
closer to the terminator. There we go. And then
that lip itself is in shadow, of course, terminator, and then
cast shadow.
Hm.
I'm just kind of evening things out a little bit.
But I mentioned this before right, with that upper eyelid
right here - that lower eyelid right here not actually that
bright, right, within a different range. As soon as I turn that
down, right, you're getting that larger curve. So this is a
great opportunity to see how a small change
actually
a small change in what seems like a small form actually
implies a much larger form underneath.
Okay, let's get into the forms of the
the tear duct.
Most of this here is in shadow so we can kind of knock it back.
As always, you know, my hand gets covered in
the graphite and then I smeared everywhere. So that's
fine. Keep in mind we'll kind of go over everything and
clean everything up closer to the end.
But you can see just sort of now I'm not moving around as
much, I'm not jumping from one spot to another
in the same way. I still can but it's not the same thing
anymore.
I'm just sort of, as I said I started on top but I just moved
it all the way down.
Just moving it
as I
get more and more
specific
on my way to the bottom of this cast.
A couple of hatch marks in there in part because they
help with form and part because it's cool.
You know,
that's what
the criteria often I hear is
does it look cool?
Which is something that I never cared too much about
but I'm now
thinking maybe that is a criteria that I've just been
ignoring. Maybe something can just look cool and that's
enough.
I still am leaning towards maybe that's just not the - maybe
that's - maybe that's fine. But
maybe there should still be something a little bit more
to
all this then simply
looking cool.
There are times when the form changes just ever so slightly
and I find it sometimes easier to just rub an entire
area in and then see what's up
and then
my make adjustments.
All right. So I think that actually kind of somewhat
defines the form. It's a little - the problem with this now is
that there's a technical issue but everything is sort of
hatched a little bit of smearing or whatever.
Kind of a softer
way to place tone in some places but usually hatched on some places but usually hats on
top and then there are the other parts towards the bottom
that kind of aren't hatched at all. There's a lack of
continuity there technically, so we need to get into that. At
same time just squint, right, and look at how bright that upper
eyelid is compared to the lower eyelid down here. In my case
they're identical but I do want to keep everything. So with a
sharp pencil if you just kind of put a - call it a glaze, color
wash.
A glaze is, you know, a transparent coat of oil paint
that kind of just unifies everything.
A wash does the same thing in ink or watercolor so
I kind of think that a pencil
and particularly a graphite allows for that more than other
media.
More than other drawing media, obviously.
It allows you to sort of place a transparent tone
on top and more or less preserve everything underneath.
Now keep in mind in an oil painting
it also it never really preserves everything. So you do
have to go back and reinforce stuff, but it's you know, you're
kind of adding another another.
like a coat on top that keeps everything underneath.
And that's kind of how I like to complete
drawings in
graphite for the most part.
In this kind of a way just analyzing everything and
accentuating certain things with an eraser and then other
parts you can knock back a little bit.
We're getting there though. We're getting there. We're definitely
getting there.
All this much softer, much smoother, not too much to worry
about, just more or less establishing a value.
I think that this right here,
right, it does need to be a darker value, right, because
that's
sort of an area just around the eye.
There's our highlight.
Okay, so I'm going to move back up to here and make sure that
this eyelid ends
and the tear duct begins, there's a separate form with the
separate orientation.
It's one of more complicated ones, right? It's
weird.
I mean half the time you can't see it. But
if you get it wrong, I think it would be obvious to
a person who knows.
Hmm. All right, right, right. That tear ducts is moving
along. I
am almost interested in changing a proportion. Isn't that
crazy at this point? But I think that I could expand
on that thing. And if you remember I was skeptical
about it from the start, but I kept it.
And now I'm moving a little bit.
Let's see. Let's see how it reads.
I like it more. I think I prefer it. So that's a good
change.
Of course I have to then make changes to the back here.
We don't need to overemphasize this though. It's not
information.
It's necessary. So yeah, it's not the kind of like
we just need to read it as clearly
the side plane of the entirety of this cast of the eye.
Maybe even - maybe a little bit of a hint at its shadow. The
slightest though. Not too much, right, just making sure it reads so I just making sure it reads so
we have it on a plane.
But that's it. I don't wanna overdo it. Now
we get to certain aspects of completion shortly.
An important one.
Mainly the edge of a form.
Because that's what really completes it -
in then academic understanding that's where completion lies
along the contours.
And you can see that happening when I even had just draw a
line and then maybe I can pull that line in a little bit.
Same here.
You do a little bit of that and
you have that edge
is resolved, right? That's the word.
And
we need more of that, of course, in order to finish this. I
think internally there's plenty,
there's plenty that I would even already call completed,
but
I don't think it'll read well unless the outer edges
are resolved. Now
that one can't be a dark value really. I even kind of
pushed it into the background because we need everything
up here to take
precedence.
But this right here down at the bottom.
Now I'm just resolving those edges.
So
the hard part about completing something, right, is that you're
looking at it and it becomes a process that's more about we
really like - it's not so much about action. It's more about
analysis. So you're looking at it longer,
like you're looking at it maybe for I'd say like in order to
complete something that's like quite complicated, there
are times I've looked at a painting and you look at it for a half an
hour just trying to figure it out, you come in and you make a
mark, but it's one mark that you couldn't have done any
other way unless you had spent that time. So
then the time at the end, right, of just looking at what's
on
the page in front of you comparing it to the the
cast that you're looking at, spend Fred spend
the necessary amount
of time so that you can then come in and make that
proper mark that will really complete the piece.
But it won't come easy.
But it won't come easy.
I do think for our purposes that we're kind of -
this is at a good spot. I do want to check this proportion
once again, right, kind of ridiculous checking proportions
this late in the game, but
I'm all for it. See if somewhere there - look at that. I
felt it. I mean and see you have the advantage, right, of
seeing it as I'm making these mistakes,
but I think
I'm going to bring down the bottom there. Does it really
matter is the question and probably not, right?
Structurally it doesn't matter mainly because if you think
about it, I mean the whole point is, right, is to get these
masses on top right to get just a cut there's always - I could
have been cut in a lot of the different places
extracted from the head and made it into an object of our
admiration now.
Now the idea of course is
possibly we are trying to get the proportions right
because we're trying to practice that. So that's
important and also in a very important aspect here is that
there are sort of proportions in the cut itself that are
rather harmonious and I think preserving them -
they're not as arbitrary. Like on the one hand you can cut it
in many places but on the other those proportions can
themselves be harmonious, you can take apart the amount of
space above the eye, below the eye, to the right and to the
left
can have a bit of impact on their own even.
Obviously not the intended impact of the artist,
more so the intended impact of the
of the person who decided
to crop here, but as we know, the most
cropping is
the main action
of composition.
Moving things around is important to get them in place,
but it's that crop which is really what most of composing
is.
All right. So I have that line there, you know from where the
error,
proportional error was, and I kind of like it though,
right? It sort of it remains as something that you look back
on and it reminds you of the mistake you made and that's
kind of in the process of education a good thing.
You're resolving some of these things, right, and at times
resolving it is this removing the edge altogether, right?
Maybe there is no edge, there is no line, maybe to finish the
form you just need a thin semblance of one.
Let's see what's happening here.
All right. I'm getting a
a sense here I feel like maybe adding now maybe a little bit
more values on the
on the parts that are in fact a bit rounder, a little bit more
curved, a little bit more turned away is what we need more than
anything else.
We have plenty of it, but I feel like why not have a just a
little more.
Okay
for the most part
I think we have a good eye here and
have really really
kind of taken
our skills
to the next level.
So let's just clean up a little bit.
All right, so that's the eye.
Now let's keep practicing this by moving on to
the other parts of the face.

In this assignment, using the images and the 3D scans
provided with this course, you're going to be working on
the cast of the eye.
It's very important that you're working on the cast because
it's large enough for you to see what's going on in terms of
the anatomy and just the changes in plane. It is taken
off of a sculpture where the anatomical elements are
emphasized and it removes all sense of color of different
textural elements and all that. The point of this assignment is
to learn to see the interplay of light and shadow on
structure.
And so if you happen to have access to a cast then of course -
an eye cast - then of course use that, but if not, then the
images are perfect in order to practice this.
So with that good luck.