The text discusses techniques for shading a face in art, emphasizing the importance of blending edges and comparing adjacent shadows and highlights. Strategies for dealing with hair, particularly curls, are covered, including advice on sketching hair in relation to light. An additional focus is given to working with paper color and achieving the correct tonal contrasts.
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Begin by focusing on shading the forehead and cheek, taking special care to form the temple and cheekbone accurately, which is more pronounced in older individuals. Also, place shading under the chin. Keep your darkest shade slightly away from the edge of the head since the darkest shadow or black is never right at the edge in a round object. Then, blend the edges of your shadows into a lighter tone at the contour of the face, so it gradually transitions to a lighter tone or a reflection. Before finalizing the lower face, sketch the neck shadow first; this aids in understanding how dark the chin shadow should be because the shadow's strength can only be assessed by comparing it to a neighboring shadow.
Similarly, when dealing with light, a shadow previously laid may appear extremely dark if surrounded by white; however, by adding another strong shadow next to it, the first shadow often seems pale, sometimes necessitating its tone to be intensified.
Adhere to the principle of placing all adjacent shadows together, allowing for better judgment of their effect and facilitating comparison.
Apply shadow to areas such as the forehead, cheek, chin, and neck, constantly comparing them to each other on your model. Blend these shadows, and then place the largest shadows on the eye sockets, nose, and mouth, always comparing these shadows with those already placed on the forehead, cheek, chin, etc. that have been done.
Take care to ensure that the highlights are larger than they seem; shadows and half-tones can sometimes narrow highlights more than intended.
Avoid working on the half-tones initially, as focusing on sculpting the head can cause light loss. Concentrate only on prominent shadows and lights. Once shadows are placed with the head sculpted like figure 1, immediately sketch the hair; the contrast of hair with varying colors can make the forehead shadow appear stronger or softer and the light more or less intense.
In sketching hair, ensure they initially extend lower than necessary to allow room for blending the edges and adding lightness. If there are curls, partly obscure the forehead, sketching much higher than the visible line, then overlapping with the hair.
Curl a lock of hair like any other round object. Curls on the shaded side receive little light, only small glimpses, whereas those on the lit side have more vivid and broader highlights. Each curl reflects on its darkened outline, creating a shadow that transitions through half-tones into light. Sketch each curl or ringlet like a wooden cylinder; use a blending stump and pencil to extend slight shadows into the light, using bread to extend lights into the shadow, finishing with a pencil to indicate any flying hairs. The same method applies to plaits or braids like figure 3.
If a veil is to be placed over the hair, first draw the hair that should be visible through the veil; then, using soft bread, sketch the veil, refining the amount of black removed according to how intense the light should appear.
When drawing on colored paper, shade as you would on white paper. However, keep everything slightly less dark; the contrast with the expected white makes shadows and half-tones appear darker. Maintain larger spaces for highlights than necessary, allowing the paper's tone to appear between half-tones and highlights, making the paper itself a half-tone.
* Note: Such comparisons must be made on the model.