✤ HALFWAY TO BLACK

✶ HALFWAY TO BLACK

On Dorian Etan's The Shading Course, Module 8, he gave us insight into a method, developed and introduced by the artist Scott Robertson in his book How To Render, for inventing roughly but effectively shading for our imaginative drawings. 

Hop and in and learn how it works!

(All images shows drawings and illustrations made by Dorian Etan. All credit goes to him!)

Step 1 ❃ Determine your light value

Your light value is your Local Value. Your Local Value is as Dorian Etan says, "the general brightness of the material".

Think of leather for example. A black leather jacket has a darker Local Value than a brown leather jacket. A white leather jacket has a lighter Local Value than a brown leather jacket.

For drawing a white Plaster Cast for example, you would choose your Local Value to be fairly light. In the case of imaginative drawing, you could choose whatever Local Value you want, that's the joy of creating for you! Dorian Etan went with white for this drawing, making a Light Probe to indicate.

Step 2 ❃ Identify the shadow value

To find the shadow value for your Local Value, you would, as the method implies, go Halfway-To-Black on the Value Scale.

In this case, if the drawing has a Local Value of say 1 on the value scale, and the darkest value is 10, your Shadow Value would be somewhere around 5. That's how simple it is. Lay in some halftones to give that extra spark of realism!

The image showing the two blocks, let us now see the method HTB (Halfway-To-Black) used on a darker Local Value.

If the Local Value on top of block 1, represents a 1 on the value scale, and the darkest value
represents a 10, then as said before, the Shadow Value would be around 5.

But if we make the right side of the block a darker Local Value, let's say 5, it's Shadow Value, would of course be darker than the Shadow Value of the white block, in this case 7.5 

For information on the HTB method, CLICK HERE

Remember! This is only a rough and simple way for making shadow, powerful of course, but do consider it's only a starting point for making realistic shadow.

Leave a comment on your thoughts on the HTB method down below. 

As always thank you for reading!

See you around!