The Shading Course

Practice: Egg Sketches

Lesson by

Dorian Iten

inThe Shading Course

4.2K

Mark as Completed

Assignments 70

Lesson Notes

Practice: Egg Sketches

Lesson by

Dorian Iten

in The Shading Course

4.2K

Mark as Completed

Assignments 70

Lesson Notes

Overview

In this first project, you’ll draw simple eggs with the first four modeling factors: Form Light, Form Shadow, the Terminator, and Core Shadow.

Materials Needed

Paper
Pencil
Eraser (optional)

Examples

Steps

Draw a few egg shapes on a sheet of paper.
Draw a terminator ellipse on each egg.
(Don't worry about drawing the terminator "correctly", just separate the egg shapes into two halves.)
Shade one half of each egg with a flat tone.
Draw a cast shadow for each egg.
(Again, don't worry about getting it right, just estimate it for now.)
Add a flat tone to the cast shadows.
Take a photograph of your sketches.

Meet these Challenges

Before uploading, name your image files correctly. Follow the instructions towards the bottom of this page.
Use the same flat tone for the form shadow area and for the contour/outline.
Draw at least 4 eggs.

Duration

This project should take 5–15 minutes to complete.

Common Mistake: Rendering

This is not a rendering exercise. Keep it simple: just draw the form light, form shadow, terminator, and cast shadow.

Ciro Damiano

•

Aurora

•

11d

@aamado

•

1mo

Tasha

•

4mo

My egg sketches

Roland Karafa

•

4mo

Becky Alemayehu

•

6mo

Egg Sketches! I found it hard to try and not render these and forced my self to stay loose. These were very fun!

Marcy Pineda

•

7mo

Here is my egg sketches assignment! Some of them I did from observation others I did from imagination! I pushed myself a bit more and did 13 instead of 4-5 since I think the more you can do the more practice you can get in! I think I have a hard time understanding where the cast shadow should land though. (13 for example is WAYYYY OFFFFF) I looked at other critiques here but I still don’t fully understand lol i also did an extra mini assignment for myself and took pictures of objects around my house and labeled which one is the specular reflection and the diffuse reflection. Like Dorian mentioned in the recorded lesson, a lot of them have a mixture of both! I think doing the extra assignment really helped me ingrain to my brain which one is which and how light works. Anyways, if anybody has critiques all critiques are welcome!! :D

Nicolas Ladouceur

•

8mo

Eggs! Left side are from imagination, then I did the right side from observation.

@marq777

•

8mo

egg.

Jesper Axelsson

•

8mo

Hi @marq777, nice studies! Nice job with showing the direction of the light using the terminator and the cast shadow! I'll do my best to help you further :) - The shape of the shading on the egg looks pretty accurate; the terminators wrap around the form of the egg, and the ellipses of the terminators are angled perpendicularly to the light. But those nice shapes lose some of their strength since the tone is filled in a little unevenly. Try drawing an egg again, and this time after having outlined the shapes, try to fill them in with a tone that's as even as possible. To get some differentiation between shading and cast shadow, you could make the cast shadow a slightly darker even tone (remember to outline the cast shadow in the lay-in too😎👍) - What's your art goal? Knowing this might help me guide you better :) Please mention any artists who do the type of work that you want to create yourself! I hope this helps :) Keep up the good work!

Vin

•

9mo

Assignment 1: eggs

Jesper Axelsson

•

9mo

Hi @Vin, nice studies! - When doing studies like these, it might help to draw the rays of light (lightly), as a guide for placing the terminator and cast shadow. Light travels in straight lines, so if you take a point along the terminator edge, then run a straight line through it, that goes in the direction of the light, it will hit the ground where that terminator point's cast shadow is. Repeating this for a few points along the terminator edge can help a lot when establishing the cast shadow edge. Thinking of the direction of light can also help when trying to place the terminator line itself. On a sphere the terminator ellipse will be perpendicular to the direction of the light. It's like it's looking at the light (if the terminator line was an animated character XD) I hope this helps :) Let me know if you have any questions!