This drawing started as a doodle of simple circles within circles. The poor thing looked embarrassingly flat however, so I shaded it because there’s nothing worse than a doodle lying around in your sketchbook feeling undone.
Push It Down and Pull It Up
One of my readers asked what “push down” and “pull up” mean when I talk about shading. To explain, think of a ball. The top of the ball is nearest you, and the sides curve away. Without trying to explain how it works technically, because that makes my head hurt, you can draw using this simple lighting scheme. Shadow pushes that part of the drawing (the sides of the ball) down into the paper. Highlight pulls that part of the drawing (the top of the ball) up to the top of the paper surface. If you’re really good, you can make the highlighted top pop out of the paper.
(Warning: I’m speaking visually here. If you drew so well as to make the drawing actually break through the surface plane of the paper, you might tear a hole in reality and collapse the universe in on itself. For this reason, please consult Peter Hawking before attempting.)
Anyway, not all lighting is this simple, but that’s why this is my default doodle lighting, despite the danger of universal collapse.
Fortune Cookie Art Wisdom: Dreams drawn on frail paper will not last.
Because the paper I used has a very thin tooth, I used soft leads – 7B, 8B, & 9B. Despite using these super soft leads, the lead literally fell off this drawing in places.
In other words, this poor doodle was wimpy to the max. So, I used a black (Pitt) pen to “punch down” the darkest areas for dramatic contrast. Not that I expected to create drama in a doodle of unstuffed olives, but what the heck. If you try this too, be aware that you’re always one cat head bump away from a permanent blotch where you don’t want one.
Here’s how I shaded these things.
1. I shaded them all with a single value hatch. I also call this kind of shading “flat” because it looks flat.
2. To make the spheres look round, I added a darker ring of hatching around the circle’s edges.
3. Then I added even more dark hatching. Notice that the circle turned into a sphere here.
4. I “smoothed” the hatching by going over it in different directions.
An omnidirectional shading over any shading usually blends it together and makes it look smoother.
5. Finally, I added a rim around the holes to make the walls of the spheres look “olive-like.”
You can see an exaggerated version of the lighting scheme in this image. The lightest sphere seems to be floating above the darker ones.
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The Memory Of Light And A Fashion Tip
We don’t really draw things, you know, we draw the way light looks on things. When you doodle from your imagination, you’re drawing the memory of light. And that’s so mind-bending-ly awesome that knowing it gives you a mysterious and far-away look that goes well with your artist’s attire.
Doodle-On Everyone!
Carol