Lesson 02: Tone and Form
Pre A Level Art & Design · Unit 1 · U1·L2 · ← L01 | L03 →
At a glance
| Session | W2, one Wednesday double (~90 min) |
| Date | Wed 2026-09-09 |
| Focus | Value; building form with tone, not outline |
| Deliverable | 10-step value scale; one shaded-form study from the chart; one tonal study of a lit object |
| Feeds | CS1 (the exercise-set check, W4) — the value scale and tonal study are two of its four pieces |
| Homework | Two tonal studies of one home object in two different lightings; MB posting |
Goal
The rule of the session: build form with tone, not outline. You will make an object look solid using only light and dark. The scale, the chart, and the lamp all exist to make that shift happen.
How it runs
- Warm-up (10 min) — value mark-making ladder: fill a strip from lightest to darkest as fast as control allows, pencil only.
- Demo (15 min) — one object under one lamp. The five things tone does: highlight, light, shadow side, cast shadow, reflected light. Then the four ways to lay tone — smooth shading, hatching, cross-hatching, blending — each named on the Drawing Exercises 3 chart (cylinder, cube, cone, sphere).
- Studio 1 (20 min) — Drawing Exercises 2: the 10-step value scale (fill the columns cleanly — steps must be even, neighbors must differ), then one form from the shading chart rendered in a technique you choose.
- Studio 2 (35 min) — the tonal study: one simple object per table (egg, paper cup, sphere) under a lamp. Draw it with no outline at all — masses of tone only. Larger than feels comfortable; push the darks darker than feels safe.
- Close (10 min) — pin-up. Each drawing gets one question: where is the light coming from? If the room can answer, the drawing works. Annotate in your sketchbook with the frames: “The light comes from … ” / “The darkest value is in … ” / “Next time I will …”
Assessment
Nothing is graded today. The value scale and tonal study go into your sketchbook as two of CS1’s four pieces (checked W4, 09-23). Register: PAL S1 Assessments.