Thank you!

You want to block in the shadow shape where the dark area looks even slightly darker than the other parts of the shadow. This is called a "bedbug" line or a "core shadow" or a "terminator line". When the value starts to lighten, that is actually midtone and is part of the light, not the shadow. I am releasing another course soon that really covers these concepts.

What a compliment, thank you.

I printed this plate at 11"x17"

It's the same with art schools in Australia. They only concentrate on contemporary techniques. It's the reason I dropped out. :(

Hi Megin, it's possible to better place the shadow correctly because all of the work for proportion and shape of the bigger pictures has already been done. I Interpreting visual information requires academic rigor and deep understanding of concepts that have been handed down for hundreds of years from artist to artist. The eye can perceive brighter brights and darker darks than charcoal can actually achieve, and it is up to an artist to interpret this information to maintain the same relationships between light and dark that is seen with the human eye. A camera makes choices mechanically. A human sees with emotion and makes different decisions for compressing visual information based on what is most important to that artist. When training in an atelier, all the students can work from the same model yet everyone in the room can say who made which drawing based solely on the artistic choices the artist made. It takes training to understand these subtle choices, much like it takes training in music to hear when a note is flat. Because this training fell out of favor during the last century, most people (including art professors at many universities) have not had access to it or even know it exists. What is interesting is that this training has become the counter-cultural movement in art education. Universities are beginning to re-incorporate visual literacy training, or atelier training, into their curricula and it is just a matter of time before a tipping point is reached. Congratulations on being a counter-cultural figure in the art world until that time :)

@The Da Vinci Initiative: Yes, that is definitely what has been boggling my mind actually. Art schools in my country do not seem to offer training in the (classical) fundamentals of drawing, painting and so on at all, but rather promote a pointless 'be creative and be modern' thing. Indeed the whole bending plastic water bottles and calling it art. No offence to contemporary art or fans thereof of course, but this is often the type of 'art' that does not require a degree. I'm sure creative thinking is something that has to be developed as well, but how the heck can that be done when someone doesn't master the fundamentals of art yet? It's wildly frustrating and in fact the reason why I try to learn on my own, instead of going to art school.

I believe drawing, painting, composition, etc., is important to learn the basic techniques--"Art" is doing something creative with what you've learned

I am drawing darker than I normally would in order for the viewer to see in these videos. You always want to draw as lightly as possible when blocking in a drawing.

We have a lesson plan that breaks down an easier plate you can download for free here: www.davinciinitiative.org/bargue-plate.html