Category: Value

Reductive Value Origami

A black and white charcoal drawing of an origami swan, a ball, and a broken sphere.
A reductive value charcoal drawing. An origami swan sits in the foreground in a rounded platform. Behind the head of the swan is a ball, and next to the ball is half a sphere that looks as if part of it has chipped off. The light source is to the right of the drawing, casting shadows to the upper left of the piece. The value of the swan is mostly light, with many highlights on the creases of the origami paper.

Reductive value is the process of adding value to the paper and then erasing to create shapes and definition. After establishing lighter value shapes, I went in with a darker charcoal and added shadows, as well as using a white conte crayon to add highlights when an eraser wasn’t enough. Since this image is so zoomed in on the still life, there are only three major forms in frame. The origami swan is the focal point, and the lightest form in the image.

Still life w/ Value

Process

This is a black,white, and grey drawing of ; a milk carton, a funnel, drapes, and other objects in an effort to practice different values of color.
value shape still life

The process and concepts of this drawing involves gesture drawing and Value shapes. Gesture drawing is drawing quickly multiple times so the average of the drawings equal the shape that I want to make, and value shapes requires using different colors and values from white to black to create the shape instead of relying on lines.
My process was really to focus on one area at a time and make the drawing and go back through again one area at a time and fix any proportion mistakes until I was ok with how it looked.

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