Tiger

[Mike Sibley]

I tried to avoid the missing shadows and light.

The missing shadows and light are the problem. Without them, Tiger is completely flat. The shadow under his chest and rear leg do at least fix him to the table, but you need the rest too.

Talking about "fixing"... you need to apply the lighting direction to the objects on the table too. They're currently floating in space.

According to the shadow under Tiger's tummy, the light is some distance away from the top of the drawing. It could be central, but you'll find it more useful if you move it off to one side - let's say to the left. Now study each part of Tiger and ask yourself a simple question:

Can this area under my pencil see the light, partial light, or no light at all.

Then ask yourself if that part of Tiger might cast a shadow on the table. You don't need to be terribly accurate with shadows, but they do need to exist.

Of course, Tiger is white, so you might think there aren't any shadows. But THERE ARE. They're just pale, because white hair reflects light within itself, which dilutes the intensity of any shadows.

I've added a few shadows. Not correct shadows, but where I'd expect to see shadows. The objects in the top-left corner show us the light is shining from above and to the left. I've used the same angle for Tiger.

Tiger is coming along very well, but he does need some modelling to plump him up.

Tiger.jpg

[Mike Sibley]

I had the light coming from above more from the left.

So did I. I just quickly blocked in some shadows, but they are where I think they should be. Shadows can be quite frustrating but the easiest thing is to picture every element in three dimensions.

For example, with the light on the left, Tiger's head will cast a shadow to its right on his body. His legs are basically cylinders, so they will have sections directly facing the light and other areas that really can't see the light at all. The less light, the darker the shadow. Except Tiger is white so "darker" isn't that dark, because white hair reflects light within itself.

So if I ground the objects and ground Tiger more with shadows and lighten up the left side more would I be on the right track?

Yes and No.

Yes, ground Tiger (and his toys!). Work out where his shadow will fall and establish it. Great accuracy is not required and you can be quite flexible with it. It's even easier if you use diffused lighting. All your shadows can be soft-edged, and the human mind can be very forgiving with such shadows.

No, don't lighten the left side - I think that's OK as it is - darken the right side. Even if that's just not allowing actual white to exist on the right-hand side of any element within Tiger.

This drawing is really lacking in contrast, and it's contrast that describes three-dimensional form. It's our way of transforming an actual two-dimensional image into a seemingly three-dimensional one.

I am sure you are shaking your head at me hahaha. I am going through your tutorials to try to have a better understanding of this.

I'm not shaking my head Shadows are a common problem. Oddly, that's not because we don't understand them, but because we DO understand them. But we understand them instinctively, subconsciously. We can decode them with a quick glance, so we don't consciously store any information useful to an artist. The solution is to actively begin looking at shadows - everywhere, in all situations.

Create your own to study too. I did that with a desklamp and a pencil - letting the pencil's shadow fall across a variety of objects.