The Ohio State University: Mansfield Campus

Making a Value Chart and Other Exercises

For this exercise the goal was to make and show understanding of value scales.  Value scales are very important for drawing. The shadow line on the paper is sadly from a wrinkle in the paper where the wind had folded my drawing while I was walking.

The value scales themselves include (from top to bottom) hatching, cross-hatching, stippling, and random markings which I drew “bubbles/stones” for.

The first image below was to show intermediate progress in shading the sphere, I used contouring lines.  The second image was to show when I had finished shading the spheres,  and moved onto the shadow for the sphere which can be seen below the next text block.


I drew and shaded the sphere mainly with an Ebony pencil and did some final touches to the shading with a B and a 6B pencil.  For removing areas I felt got to dark I mainly used a kneaded eraser.
I was not thrilled about the sphere as I did not have a reference in front of me for the shadows of shaping it was purely from memory.  I should have gone and found a marble or something but by the time I thought of that I had already laid in my darkest shading.

I drew the outline for the cube with an HB charcoal stick and shaded it mainly using twig charcoal. After I was happy with the layer of twig charcoal I then did touch ups with the HB charcoal stick.  Just as with the sphere any part that got to dark I used a kneaded eraser, and cleaned the edges with a rubber eraser.
When I was drawing the cube I had pulled up a reference to get a sense of where the shadows should go and about how dark they should be comparatively.  In the end I was very happy with my charcoal cube.