Artist Sourav Pramanik Easily on Drawing Draw to mosquito shadow black and white draw

Look at Figure 4 and squint your eyes until the image seems to go out of focus. Compare the darkest values to the lightest, and try to see the abstract shapes created by the different values.

The second drawing shows what you may see when you squint. Take note of the shapes created by the values.

Figure 4: Squinting to see values and shapes.

Turning colors into values with squinting

Many drawing media, such as graphite, are designed for black and white drawings. Yet, almost everything in the world is in color. You need to adjust your visual perceptions to see these colors as shades of gray when drawing.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could simply press a button in the middle of your forehead and magically transform the world from full color to gray values? This ability would certainly make drawing a lot easier. Thankfully, simply squinting your eyes can help you develop this skill.

Try these suggestions to help you train your mind to translate colors into values:

Look around you at different objects. Focus on only the light and dark areas and not the actual colors. Concentrate on the light and shadows. Then squint your eyes until you see the values of that object. Take a mental note of where the lights and darks are. Think about how you could draw these darks and lights. Don’t get discouraged if you can’t do it right away. With practice, you get better.

Find a colored photograph with lots of contrast. Squint your eyes to block out the colors and details. In your sketchbook, draw only the simple shapes and values you see. Add shading with only black, white, a light value, and a middle value.

If your subject has, for example, light-pink and dark-red stripes, seeing two different values in the two colors is easy. You simply draw the dark red as a dark value and the pink as a light value. But some objects have colors that seem to be the same in value. When this is the case, you simply have to rely on your own discretion to decide which colors should be drawn lighter or darker than others. If your subject has stripes of dark green and dark red, you need to pick one to be a lighter value. Otherwise, you end up drawing a solid tone instead of stripes.