Drawing Tutorial 025 - Basics(Part - 3) - Tonal values

Tone, as a drawing term, is the degree of lightness or darkness in an area of the drawing. When light falls on any object, light is reflected by the object depending on its surface. Depending upon the position of observer and light source, some areas of the object shall be bright and some will be in shadow. Also, there will be some area which will seem to be balanced i.e. not too bright and not too dark. Taking in terms of tone, a bright area will be referred as highlight, balanced lighting will be referred to as mid-tone and dark area as shadow.

Since graphite drawing is monochrome, tone is very important in graphite  drawing, the shadow of the tree falling on the road besides very efficiently suggests how the road surface is.

Bringing contrast in a drawing is very important to give life to the drawing. When darker areas and lighter areas stand side by side distinctly without fading into one another, it gives contrasting tones. this makes the drawing vivid and avoids dullness. Obviously there will be areas where the tones will be merged, but contrast in a drawing is important.

Studying tonal values in a drawing is important to understand the underlying shape of the object and how light interacts with a particular shape. Also, when for an object, light changes direction, how it changes the tones in different areas is good subject of study. The following drawing shows the same face when lights are falling from different directions.

While drawing and studying tone (shading as usually called in graphite drawing) its good idea to block larger areas that are of same tone. Once the large areas are blocked, finer variation can be attempted to bring more realism to the drawing. Its again very good idea to study human face under   light(from one direction preferably) for tonal variation. As the shape becomes complex, it gives very wide variation of tones. However, for starting, basic shapes viz. sphere, cylinder and the likes are very helpful.

Developing the shading from scratch by building areas of similar tones is fun. The underlying idea of this is to segregate areas that are in shadow and areas that are in full light. All intermediate areas, then can be developed to create the final sketch. Here is one step by step drawing illustrating the idea.