Using Values and Gradients (Part 2) --- The Basics of Drawing

Welcome Back!  In this post, we will be continuing with our drawing.  Today, we will be looking mostly at the midtones and values of the scene.

Working in the Mid-Tones and Continuing with the Gradients…

Now we are getting somewhere. What we want to do here is fill in those huge spaces of white with their respective values. Use comparisons of values that are next to each other to help you with this. I spent a lot of time with the grass on the downward staircase during this phase, because I wanted it to be light enough to be separate from the dark shape of the stairs, but dark enough to separate it from the closest part of that deck-platform-thing straight across the way.

Notice: we are not focusing on details right now, just the basic shades. Here’s definitely where being able control your gradients becomes a true asset.

I did jump ahead a bit with the forest, but the general process was the same. I filled in the base tone, and created some really deformed gradients to faintly hint at “leaves” versus “ground” (and really just noticed that a few of the tree trunks that really stood out). Remember those blobs from “D” in that above image? That’s how I created the look of the foliage beneath the stairs. I didn’t want to jump too far ahead, so I continued with this during the later steps.

The midtone gradients are a little more difficult to control, because they are fainter. However, they aren’t handled much differently from the darker ones: start from the darkest part of the midtone and move toward the lighter part.

I added a very faint value over the majority of the brick wall. This will be the approximate value of the mortar between the bricks. We won’t worry about the bricks just yet, though.

Finishing all of the Midtones and Preparing for Texture…

Now this is actually starting to look like a piece of artwork. We just continued to fill in those flat regions of value as well as the rest of those gradients. We are now ready to start looking into texture. I’ve continued with my jumping ahead on the forest at the top of the image; it is much closer to its finished state, and the darker regions I was trying to define are a lot more evident. Again, they are really just another step down on the gradient from the region that surrounds them, and they barely follow any real pattern. The randomness is what helps them look like leaves over top of those straight regions of light that made the tree trunks.

The only other part of the image that has anything resembling a deliberate attempt at texture is the window at the top right. Again, this followed the basic regions of shading visible in the image.

What is important to note here is that we are still being very loose with our shading.  We are not trying to pencil in very tight and perfect rectangles of specific values.  It's more like we are trying to scribble darker and darker patches over the regions we have already defined.  We can tighten up the edges of the really dark regions by going over their edges a few times with a few firm strokes until we've straightened them out  — just don't push too hard, or they will look darker than the region we are trying to clear up.  Doing this as well as darkening our darkest values is how we can increase contrast in our image.


Alright, we're doing pretty good here.  In the next post, we will be finishing this drawing with textures and some polish.  See you then!