Reverse Shading

There are so many different ways to teach students to shade. I usually attempt the three step process where students start by placing the medium tone, then build and pull in the lowlights, and finally erase for the highlights. I also encourage students to try LOT of different techniques, since again there is no one perfect way to shade. HOWEVER, even with practice I still have students that struggle to create that wide range of value we all desire for in realism pieces. I tend to have a lot of really dark, muddled projects or super light barely noticeable shading.  So I decided to mix it up a little. REVERSE SHADING!

Instead of having my student work with traditional charcoal on white drawing paper, I had them use white charcoal on black paper. This caused a lot of upset students at first. Having to think about an image backwards was definitely a challenge for most my students, but once they got the hang of it they were hooked. In 100% honesty, this exercise of having students notice the lights in an image benefited my students shading abilities greatly! I HIGHLY recommend this to any beginning shaders! Enjoy!

I'm sure you have all hear of "The Compassion Project", well this is one of the 8th grade projects that went with our "Art of Compassion" art show this year. I will be doing a later post with more specifics, but for this project students were asked to choose subject matter that represented compassion in some way to them. Let's just say, I was blown away with not only their imagery but the way they challenged themselves with subject matter. Check back in for more on "Art of Compassion" later :)