When I first went to art school one of the first things we were taught after learning perspective, anatomy, and proportions was learning how to see dimension and render it on a two dimensional surface. Such a simple task. Drawing 3 dimensional form on your surface. And yet it can be taught in such a way that makes things super complex and impossible to understand. There must be a better way to understand this stuff.
Fortunately I finally had a great teacher who taught us how to see light and its interaction with objects. He showed us how the direction of light determines what happens on the surface of an object. He started with a simple sphere and based on the understanding how light interacts with a spherical object we learned how to apply it to other more complex shapes such as eyes, noses, hands, vases and so on. What a revelation!! By simply understanding how to draw light falling across a spherical object I suddenly saw how light interacts with other objects. My eyes were open and drawing dimension was revealed. Therefore as part of a short video series I am creating I thought I would start with a brief introduction to how to draw light falling across a spherical object.
Watch it here: https://youtu.be/34HgtSpEHaE
I also realised later on that I didn’t cover cast shadows well in this brief introduction that I created another short video on cast shadows.
It can be viewed here: https://youtu.be/GGw7pRewMKg
Creativity Permit Required 