When I first started teaching drawing I was asked to take on a class focused primarily on value — something I had rarely used in my own work, which leaned heavily toward contour line. My background as a printmaker had prepared me well for etching and relief, but value-based drawing was new territory. There is no better way to learn something than to have to teach it. I found Nathaniel Goldstein’s The Art of Responsive Drawing and his concept of “value shapes” combined with a restricted value scale gave me exactly the framework I needed. I’ve used that approach ever since. It works, and it works well. Value has become one of my favorite things to teach — the satisfaction of watching a student who has never worked with tone before suddenly produce a convincing, fully observed drawing using nothing more than shapes of light and dark is hard to beat. The drawings below are from a recent restricted value still life project on plain white paper.
