Drawspace lesson Q06: Shading a Cylinder

I love shading basic forms. I love it so much that I decided to make an egg shading my monthly exercise. So when Lesson Q06 came along, I gladly - and quickly - completed the task.

For the challenge I decided to shade a coffee mug.

I love the way the mug itself is shaded, but it's handle, the really difficult part of it, is drawn pretty poorly. But like I once said here, a mugs handle is a world in itself and deserves a separate treatment.

Developing creativity: Doodling with Illustration Class .

In my search for Creativity development exercises I came upon a site called Illustration Class. One of the things it suggests are free Creativity Development Exercises for download. I went through some of them and found them really nice. So from now on I will be using some of the suggested there for my practice.

The first lesson I chose is called "What do you see". The idea is to fill a paper with scribbles and then use the empty/negative space to create images. They actually created a scribbled sheet for you but obviously, you can (and I think, you should) make one of your own.

The first thing I saw on that paper was a balloon. And then another one. After a while all I could see were balloons made of loops. So I decided to fill them with some color first. I took a time frame of 15 minutes and started working.

After eliminating all the possible loops I took another paper and began the exercise itself.
To make it easier I first decided to outline the form I would be working on. This is the result.

And then I took another 15 minutes and made my own scribbles page.

I had so much fun doing that!!! I really enjoyed this exercise. It is really challenging and good in so many aspects:

• It took me away from the co-called perfect sketching I'm used to. 
• It makes me work with irregular form and be creative as to squeeze the imaginary item into the given form. 
• It challenges me to see something that might or might now be there.

It was so cool, I loved it!