Value Demo: INTRO TO DRAWING BAD ART (Patreon)

I added a value scheme to a drawing that a frustrated 6 year old made in one of my classes. I built a crude maquette based on the drawing, put a light on it and used the maquette to inform how I organized my values.

In this video I do a little recap of the lesson video, then start the drawing, I sped the video up towards the end (and added a little bonus music.)

This was admittedly a very strange way to demonstrate value. I was drawing from imagination and life at the same time and also trying to explain how to build value relationships. I couldn't have just drawn a simple still life?

Well, I wanted to try something different. I think the drawing turned out good in the end. I liked working from the maquette, I think I'll do that more in the future. But most importantly, I think I said some stuff about value that made sense.

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.” -Richard Feynman

I remembered this quote when editing this video. It relates to value so much.

Our eyes can see billions of subtle shifts in value in the real world. And it’s not only that we see these sudden shifts, but our eyes are adjusting the values we are seeing. Robert Henri calls this “looking the shadows out of the face” in portrait painting.

We can look the shadows out of anything we draw or paint. That’s why the value scale is more important for your drawing than what you are seeing.

A simple way to think about this process might be: Use what you first see to decide the values, then convert what you are seeing into the values you've chosen.

The value scale will help you not fool yourself.

I’m really disappointed and sorry about the shaky camera in this video. I didn’t notice it until I was editing and it drove me crazy. I hope you'll be able to stick around despite that. I’ll fix that for the next video.

Further Study and materials

Head Study App

Planar Head I use

Faber Castell makes my favorite woodless Pencils but they don't make a set so you have to buy them individually

Here's a good set of woodless pencils from another brand 

I used Sculpey polymer clay and paperclips to build the maquette 

James Gurney's book imaginative realism inspired me to make the maquette.

Here’s a video of how James Gurney makes a maquette His simple maquette is so much more elegant than mine. I just wrapped some clay around some paper clips. Those of you who like sculpting and making 3D might really benefit from making these models as reference.