Red Cup A or B

These are two black and white graphite drawings of the same subject, a red cup sitting in a white saucer with a black card in the background. This was an exercise of manipulating values, the lights and the darks in a scene. I hand drew the same image twice by using  graphite pencils on Bristol Smooth paper.

In image 1, A, I used no pure black. On a scale of 1-10, black being a 1 and pure white a 10, there is no value 1 in the image. The card is a 2 value. Notice that the contrasts are extreme and the scene looks sharp. If I had taken the dark down all the way to black, the contrasts would be even more extreme.

In this second image, B, I used no 1 values, no 2 and no 10. Notice how the scene looks more soft and dreamy as if it is in lower light or viewed on a misty day.

 

 

It is interesting. Artists make lots of choices that influence how we respond as the viewer.