Shading…does it have any value?

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Well, of course! ;D Referring, of course, to value as that all important element of art 🙂 After explaining light sources and their effects on objects’ values all day I am half loopy.

Does anyone know of a particularly effective source for teaching shading with a light source? Let me know! We are being pretty complex-using five types of shading, and Greek capitals (results coming up in a couple of blogs).

Here, meanwhile, are a few well-rendered examples from my Drawing class we did to get warmed up.

Blending
Crosshatching
Stippling

Graphite and Grid Drawing…awesome!!

Art II Drawing students have been studying value and basic shading techniques. We did a collaborative whole-class artwork that really turned out beautifully–and was a good teaching tool to show how important the element of value is to successful artwork.

Each student was given a 1″x1″ square cut from a black and white copy of a photo. They were instructed to enlarge it onto a 6″x6″ square, paying careful attention to value and proportions. When everyone was finished, we glued the results together, and crossed our fingers! —one thing I found helped was laying out the pieces, letting everyone look at the “big picture,” and then letting them add or subtract value, etc. to enhance the drawing.

The fun part was that no one got to see the photo they were working from until we finished, so the result was a lovely surprise! Enjoy! 

Cemetery Angel

 

Egyptian Period Portraits

My Art I students recently studied Egyptian art and hieroglyphics, and we created a portrait in the style of traditional Egyptian art while reviewing basic elements like line, shape, and form.

Students studied Egyptian portraiture, practiced drawing facial profiles, then created a portrait. They were required to add a headdress and pectoral decoration like that worn by “New Kingdom” Egyptians. These were then bordered in hieroglyphics which had to depict the student’s first name above the portrait, last name below, and could be hieroglyphs or ideograms of their choice on the sides.

We discussed the Egyptians’ limited use of color, and how they used very pure, colorful pigments such as red, “Egyptian” blue, green, yellow, black, and white, as well as gold and silver. After using colored pencils to add color, students accented their artworks with gold metallic paint.

The results were lovely!! 🙂