Shadow and light, two of the most important tools that we have in drawing when we're wanting to communicate things three dimensionally. And the use of tonal values in shadow and light and shading can dramatically change your drawings from becoming very immature to very matured. So it's a really, really important skill to take some time to delve into and to develop fully. And it takes a while to do shading, it doesn't happen very quickly. And I feel that often, when you're just starting out, you think, Oh, I'm never going to be able to do that. I'm never going to be able to create that drawing but It takes a little bit of time to add detail to a drawing.

So before you say that I challenge you to take some time and to spend a long time doing a drawing and really see how you go. And working with the shadow and light principles and the natural laws in the way that light hits an object can really help you to expand your drawing skills really quickly. Adding shadow to return can really help also to ground things in reality and to make them look like they belong here. And there's different forms of light that you can choose to represent. You can represent really strong directional light, for example, the sunlight in the middle of the day. You can also have the sun setting and have really Angular shadow happening.

You could also use artificial light in a spotlight that would help to represent a natural sunlight and the same kind of directional shadow, but it can also create a lot of mood and a lot of emotion. Using this kind of light. Another type of light would be on a really overcast day, if you have a look at all the shadows, they're not well defined. And that overcast and scattered lie is a really beautiful effect. It can also be represented superficially by creating multiple light sources so that if you have multiple lights on an object, it will create a smaller shadow for it. Some points to consider when you're drawing would be does your light come from the sun or from artificial light?

What time of day? Is it? Is the light directional and defined? Or is it scattered and hazy? What moods or emotions is your light invoking as well? And as artists, we have full creative freedom to use shadow as we please there are no real rules.

It's all about helping your objects to look three dimensional and to look realistic. However, you don't have to draw exactly What you see in relation to shadow, you can always edit and have an artistic eye in relation to that. I'm going to start today's exercise is just by drawing a bunch of random circles on top of each other. And I'm not going to be too particular about them, just a bunch of different shapes and a larger one down the bottom. And then once I finished that, I'm going to pop out the parts that cross over into the top circle. And I create a Stein stack.

And I'm going to create some directional light and my light source is going to come from this way, hit my stones tag and create a shadow at the space. I'm just going to draw an arrow so you can see where my light source is going to go and my Shadow Broker out here and I'm also going To add a horizon line at the back, because I want to ground my drawing in reality today I'm using a pencil that has no wood in it, it is only led at the top. And it's a really great way of creating quick shading because it has quite an easy gradation of dark to light and I can turn it on its side and create a lot of shadowing at once However, you can still do this exercise with a regular pencil. And I'm going to start by going up to the top stone and working my way down.

If my light source is coming from this way, the main shadow area is going to be around here and to create a circular shape, I want dark shading on one side and I want to blend the line around this side. But I want to keep that area at the top as light as possible. So there will be more shading around the bottom of the stone and I will go gradually work my way towards the light area. As you can see here I planted the shadow so that the string looks really round it's got a really strong rotation from Dr lies. And now I can look at my spine underneath. Now here the light will be hitting the same area, but it will also be creating more shadow in this area of the stone.

And I want to create this kind of edge of the top Stein so that we can see where that shadow sits and then it will blend back into the back part of the stone. So I'll create that first and then I will start going around and creating the title darkness of the natural shadow on the rock. And again, I will be creating a stronger gradation from the back where it will be the darkest and working my way forward, and that's how you create something to look really round it's really important to get a lot of depth and dimension in your shadowing. As I'm getting to my lava stack, I'm going to start adding a lot more shading underneath. This particular stone is coming out a lot further than the other stones so I'm actually to kind of create a bit of a shadow sitting down there that has more of a secular angle sitting on top of it, and when I'm doing this, it's like I'm, in a way I'm the master of shadows.

I'm creating it wherever I want it to be. I could have chosen to do a much softer light that was in coming in from a different direction. But I have chosen this top direction to work from today and that really is my choice as an artist. And where I want this to fall on a bit too much this I'm just gonna run out. Make sure that I do have that nice contrast with the light and the dark areas because I'm a big fan of contrast and creating drama in your shadowing. Now that I'm happy with my string stack, I've created this really great shapes that are looking really alive and I've got a lot of movement, I've created a bit of a dramatic shadow down the bottom here, I need to make this one a little darker to match the one underneath now, so I can go back and edit at the end.

I've also got a little bit of light coming along the outside here because even though the light is coming from here, and this area is in shadow, there would be a bit of reflected light coming from the rest of the world. So it's just a little bit lighter on the back end, but then a lot darker down here and then my shadows are quite strong, I might add a little bit of a shadow in there later. We'll see how we go because these are quite dramatic now. But still, that's just showing a different distance and a different angle. I can also possibly add now some little cracks to my Stein's. I can add some little sort of Stein imperfections if you will, into the area, I can also shade off some parts of it to make it look more realistic.

So just go ahead and create these different areas now that give the area the shapes of the stone, a totally different look. And I can do that because I have artistic liberty, imagine if there was a bit of a fissure going up there. And then a little shadow in there, show them out here. And why not we can do whatever we want. Because there are stones. Now that I've had of these cracks, my drawings taken on a little bit of an eerie feeling to it already, which I think is great.

So now I'm going to create some shadow going off into this direction because my lights coming down this way. So my shadow is generally going to be placed around here. And I'm going to do more of a scattered shadow that's going to be tapering out towards the end. But I'm going to start off by making it quite dark. In this area, I've decided that I don't want to do a direct shadow that has the roundness and the outside, I'd rather have a bit of a contrast and just feather it off more lightly on the ground. So for this particular texture on the ground because I'm working a lot quicker, it is creating a different look to the shadow texture.

And sometimes using your hand fast or using your hand slow, can really create a huge difference in what's coming out on the page. Play around with that. Getting to know your hand building a relationship with your hand, does your hand like to work fast? Do you like the feeling that it creates in you when you're working a lot quicker. Now that I've finished blocking in my shadow, I'm just going to spend some time smudging with my finger. This is quite a soft graph, right?

So I can just feather out the edges even further and more delicately with a bit of a smudge. It's a nice contrast to having a strong line on the edges of my stones. And another thing that I want to do, and we'll talk about this more when we talk about advancing and receding, but we want to create a bit of depth and dimension on the ground. And so dark times were saved and light times advanced. So I'm just going to put a little bit of darkness in the background and slowly taper That off towards us to give a sense of depth and dimension. And because this is a drawing, I'm really going to take some artistic Liberty here and show the texture that the pencil creates and use the texture that the pencil creates to give a bit of texture to my flooring.

And lastly, I have some fingerprints in the sky that I'm just going to get rid off. That's about it. It's hard to see in this slide, and I'm going to go back and erase out my error because we don't need that anymore. And I have done a gorgeous little exploration into my shadows. So let's see if you can replicate that in your own way just creating your own random shapes. Remember to draw the circles really quickly and then pay a lot Have attention and detail to that really round shape that you're creating over and over again, and then pay attention to where your shadows are going to see on the rocks and on the ground as well.