Simultaneously learning charcoal with this process, so blending and line weights are taking me extra time. I liked the overall shape I ended up with, though it's less spacey-automotive and more a series of primitive boolean operations. I think the main shading elements I had trouble with were the flattened planes on the top side of the cylinder and the shadows on along the top of the half spheres. The upper planes have a crisp edge that turns them a few degrees and are shaped as if a giant's hands pinched the nape of its neck together. The vertical left side should be tipped faster into shadow, while the upward facing right side is tipped towards the light. The cast shadow from the prow adds some confusion since it doesn't form a very recognizable silhouette, and because I've gone with softer cast shadows on the spheres and ground. The planes themselves also fight with an implied circle outline that aligns closer with the cast shadow than the resolved sweep I gave it up the arch. Assuming the spheres are perfect spheres, the width of those cast shadows would give away the width of the rest of the structure. Took a few passes to balance the values on those out and to stop overly darkening the contact shadows. The ground shadows I embellished with a little bit of perspective that tips the ground towards the view, while treating the horizon as perfectly flat once it reaches the center of the structure. It helps (I hope) emphasize that the left side of the cylinder is wider than the right, and gives a bit of falloff and direction to the cast and contact shadows. I liked how the outlines turned out, with some decent implied lines on the lighter side. I rely too much on outlines, so I tried to lean into that. There are a few scrapes and gouges in the paper I couldn't erase, and the charcoal paper's texture makes for some interesting resolution challenges. How should I approach lighting a sphere in full cast shadow? Does it have a core shadow at all, or just contact and bounced light?

Blobby blobs

What do you mean by compressing the light? Does't Lambert's law compresses the shadows...?

I did this drawings thinking in this lesson. Any critique is very much appreciated.

This is great! Is there an explanation of how to illustrate the volume of the lit surface area along the top of a form? In a case where you want to identify a sculptural detail of the surface that is being described.

I confess that I found it really difficult to visualise what the shape would be from the outline. I struggled to get the forms to sit together in a natural way….any advice?

First try at this lesson.

Wanted to give it a try. I used a lead holder mechanical pencil with 2B (personal preference). I needed extra reference, so mocked up this shape in Blender to see if I was getting the lighting behavior right. Don't know if that's cheating, but I'd prefer that to just imagining it and hoping for the best. Also, I have trouble with figuring out how dark is "too dark". Is it dark in reference to everything else in the picture? I know not to make the terminator pitch black, as that'll make it flat as Wisconsin. But is this too dark or too light?

My attempt at this assignment and a render study of two balls with different materials.

I was rewatching the video and decided to try it out. Drew a reference (sorta bulging crescent shape) below. Used a combination of random mechanical pencils lying around (not artist mechanical pencils) for the outline, and a Prismacolor 6B pencil for the shading (as well as a tiny bit of erasing, using a Tombow mechanical eraser and a gum eraser I ripped a chunk off of).

maybe I missed something, but I don’t understand why is the shadow casting here, if the light comes straight from the top.

Tried applying the lesson to a similar shape - changed it some to see whether I understood the concepts. All feedback is welcome.