This past week I took a class with Stephen Bauman https://www.florenceacademyofart.com/faculty/stephen-bauman/
I learned most about the concept of value. All teachers talk about value but sometimes it takes one to finally make the light bulb go on. Value is the relationship of light to dark as it relates to the whole drawing but also to the immediate areas. For example, while drawing the model I had noticed that the values around the top of the face where lighter than the values around the bottom of the face. However, I did not see that in order to make the light values of the forehead pop out I had to darken the hair in relationship to the forehead. Changing the values around the face create shape. If the values are wrong the face will be flat.
The tools of graphite drawing were also a new challenge. There are so many kinds of lead, lead pencils, erasers, blending tools and papers. I loved the Mono Zero eraser pencils and playing with the hard and soft lead mechanical pencils.
