Help with a background please…

[Jo Sheridan]

Hi All, I have been having a go at Bernini’s David sculpture – I have got this far… I always struggle with knowing how dark to take things and they often end up too light… as well as that I now have to sort out my background – I think it will be darkest around the sling and the hands getting lighter as you move away from that point – my other idea is to use charcoal – either pencils or vine charcoal… any suggestions would be welcome.

[Carlos Perez]

Hey Jo, good work there it does look convincing and structured and you capture well the sculpture-ish aspect of Bernini.

If you want to know how dark to get remember to  ” Squint”, partly close your eyes and look at your value differences.

Realistically speaking we want a clearly 2 value distinction, which means 2 zones,  Shadow and light, and we want a clear jump between them meaning that No value in the light zone is as dark as the lightest value in the shadow zone.

You can apply this same system to your background as well,  maintaining it as an  “OREO cookie ” Black cookie/ white cream/ black cookie/ white cream.  Black background zone /Light figure zone/ black figure zone/ light background zone.

Let me know if  i make myself clear and Thanks for sharing your drawing ::)

 

[Jo Sheridan]

Hi Carlos, this is great thanks – You are  backing up my thinking that I need to go a bit darker in the shadows to get some better contrast – so thanks for that.

I am loving the OREO cookie idea, this is really cool – I know I shall be much too cautious to go straight for some black cookie colour, so mine will probably look more like a macaroon for a bit! Thanks for your help, Jo.

[Jo Sheridan]

So… I had another go at this and have put a background to make this a bit more complete – can’t say I think I got it right as I was struggling all the time between the need that I felt to make this a smooth graded colour, and the sound of Sheldon Borenstein’s voice telling me to make it rough and random. So I did some smooth shading, then made it random with my rubber, then went back over it again to smooth it out !!  (scanned at 300dpi so lost some detail her but I think you get the general picture) Anyway – any help would be greatly appreciated. Jo

[Edgar R]

Hello, the technique looks fine and in harmony with the rest of the drawing. The only thing I would recomend is to mind the direction your light is coming because the subject is lit from the right and it would make sense to have the left side of the piece in shadow, including the background. This would also give you the chance to “loose” some of the  edges in the figure and make it more integrated and better flowing 🙂

[Jo Sheridan]

ooh I do like this – I wasn’t thinking about the light at all on my background – but your comment really makes sense… if anything I was trying to find contrast in my edges rather than losing any, but you are absolutely right and you have given me a really good structure to base my background on – thank you so much. Jo

[Author]

Posts