Check & Log - Tone and Form

I have finally completed the Tone and Form exercises of assignment 1.  Initially I thought I would struggle in this area; however I feel I have achieved a good sense of tone and form in my drawings. I did find it particularly hard to achieve this using pen. However I did find charcoal pencils and lead pencils to be a really good medium to use as these helped me achieve more realistic shadow and light reflections. I did find shading and hatching more preferable than line.

Initially it was quite hard to see the more subtle shadows on the objects but I read in the Reader’s Digest 2008 edition of ‘Complete guide to drawing and painting’ that a good thing to do is to squint whilst looking for the shadows and reflected light before drawing your objects. I found this to be really useful. Also, taking pictures in black and white before drawing something really helps show the true form of an object.  I found it quite natural to draw the secondary reflected light as I was very focused on the shadows and found myself naturally drawing any secondary light reflections.