Sunny or Overcast

5/15/19 Maple Leaf neighborhood

If I had to name one thing that I think about more than anything else while I’m sketching, it is values. I know that composition is equally important, but I usually choose that fairly quickly (sometimes regrettably), so I don’t spend much time thinking about it after I’ve committed to it. But getting the values right is a challenge all the way through.

Ever since I took Accurate Drawing Basics a couple of weekends ago, I’ve been thinking about values and their importance even more. It wasn’t an accident that the still lives we practiced drawing in the workshop were strongly lit from one side while the rest of the studio was dark, producing the ideal condition of a single, strong light source. As we all know, it’s easier to sketch on location when the earth’s single, strong light source is shining brightly, casting all kinds of easily visible shadows on and around our sketch subjects.

I went for a walk one brilliantly sunny morning last week to sketch the scene above. I became confused by and then interested in the shadows on the four cypress trees growing next to a building. The sun was coming from the right side of the sketch. The tallest cypress was shaded on the left where I expected it to be shaded. But the tree next to it was more darkly shaded on the right. Huh? Then I realized it was the first tree casting that shadow onto it. I saw the same pattern on the second pair of trees. Even with a single, strong light source, form shadows (the ones that help define the shape of a dimensional object) and cast shadows are not always straightforward (I sometimes had the same confusion during the workshop).

5/13/19 Maple Leaf neighborhood

In these parts, the single light source is often diffused by a thick layer of clouds. It’s frustrating to have to squint hard to see low-contrast shadows, and everything looks the same value. I deliberately went out on a couple of overcast (even drizzly) days last week to see if using my red/blue pencil could help me see and indicate the values better. Without the benefit of nice, dark shadows, these two scenes (at left and below) look flat and two-dimensional, but in my head, I was still using the same “code” that I used on the sunny day: Red = lighter values; blue = darker.

Does using high-contrast red and blue this way help to convey a scene’s values, even if I couldn’t always see them easily?

5/16/19 Wedgwood neighborhood