Hey art pals! If you’ve been learning how to draw for a while, you’ve probably heard about value studies, also known as tonal drawings. They’re super helpful in expanding your value range and drawing with more depth and are widely considered necessary practice for anyone hoping to master drawing or painting.
Personally, doing value studies has transformed my drawing skills. To demonstrate, here’s a selection of my drawings from way back before I had practiced value studies.
As you can see, my drawings were rather ghostly – utterly pale and devoid of any contrast that was necessary to convey the depth of the forms. I pretty much struggled with drawing darker values and this caused my sketches to seem flat.
In comparison, here are some of my more recent sketches in which I have tried to push the values by applying what I have learned by practicing value studies over the last couple of years.
While admittedly there’s still so much I need to improve with respect to value drawing, I’m pretty thrilled with the progress so far.
So in this post, I am excited to share with you a worked example of my process for doing value studies from a photo reference that I have split into 8 simple steps, along with tips, resources, and exercises to help you make the most out of your practice.
The Eight-Step Process for Drawing Value Studies
1. Pick up a good reference.
When doing value studies, opt for photo references with nice contrast and interesting tonal shapes so you can really appreciate the different transitions between the shadows and highlights.
Oh, and pick something that matches your skill level. No need for crazy foreshortening or anatomy and choose something you feel comfortable drawing structure-wise so you can focus on the values.
Need some inspiration? Check out my Pinterest board that has some nice references for doing value study practice.
2. Identify the major tonal shapes in your reference and observe the different types of shadows.
As beginners, we often underestimate the role of shadows in visualizing the shape of what we’re drawing. It’s important to observe not just the shapes of the forms but also the pattern of tones that you notice on and surrounding the drawing subject.
Before starting your drawing, here are some things you want to observe in a reference to help you plan your drawing:
- The major shadow shapes appear on the surfaces that are turned away from the light source or are cast by objects blocking the light.
- The core shadows visible along the terminator line.
- Lighter shadows that receive reflected light from nearby objects and forms.
- The darkest shadows trapped between surfaces and forms that don’t permit light to reach.
Here’s a quick guide on the different types of shadows and their characteristics that you might want to read if this step seems a little tricky to you.
3. Establish the basic structure of your drawing.
Before doing any detailed rendering work, be sure to nail down the basic structure first. Drawing accurate proportions and perspective is critical in this step so take some time to make sure you get these right.
Also, outline those major shadow shapes you identified earlier within the structure of drawing at this stage as it will help you to block in the shadows more easily in Step 5.
4. Prepare a value key of the tonal range.
A value key is useful in setting the range of values you want to explore in a drawing. It’s like a palette of greys, blacks, and whites for value drawings. Personally, I like to keep things simple with four tones – darkest shadows, lightest shadows, mid-tones, and the pure white of the paper.
I find drawing the whole value scale showing all transitions of values a bit of an overkill at this stage and keeping the the value key restricted to these broad groups helps me to keep the values more organized.
5. Block in the shadows shapes in a consistent tone of the lightest shadow.
