So very glad I completely misunderstood something. This lead to maybe some hint for me to improve on my values.
When we learned about moving from charcoal to charcoal and white chalk, I understood that I should design the shapes so that my light shapes will not have any charcoal in it, only white chalk. I completely did not understand what it really meant.
I thought it sounded easier than with only charcoal. So what I did, which I didn't realized, but was pointed out today by an instructor dead on, that I subsequently grouped all what would be "half tones" into the shadow side of the shadow lines. I will remember to take a picture to compare after I'm done correcting it.
This explains to me how my logic was wrong! Well, maybe not my logic was wrong, but I was simply WRONG!! : ) halftones goes in the light shapes, did I simply forgot or just got mixed up at some point? Or, I think halftones are so dark, they should be in shadows? This becomes a problem, more apparent recently since I've been drawing longpose in the brighter side of the model room, most body is in light, very little shadows and a whole lotta halftones.
So I think I'm starting to see a tendency I have.
1. I tend to group halftones into shadows rather than into lights.
2. I will put everything really dark in my shadow shapes pitch dark.
3. I then darken the halftones with charcoal while at the same time looking for smaller shapes in the halftone.
4. I end up having values that work together in a small area but does not work with the rest of the picture.
My classmate was right! It is about my shape design.
So I sort of traced my steps here, back to this concept of "designing shapes better to have better control of values" ... all of this was necessary for me to come to the realization of what my classmate meant, as I am not accustomed to logical thinking growing up but rather learned it the hard way later in life...
but, uhh, my conclusion again is, I don't know how to group the halftones. I can think of 2 ways to attack the design of the halftone shapes.
1. find the most obvious shapes and put them down with a somewhat halftonish value.(what I do most)
2. scan through the halftone area and decide what area needs no charcoal at all, then put a thinn layer of charcoal on the rest. Then look for the next shape within this thin layer of charcoal, just so to darken it with another thin layer of charcoal. The concept of image compression, also learned to do this with water color. This is however extremly hard in practice, I am normally lost after the first round. I do think there is a chance I can improve on this practice.
3. do the same as method 2 but start with the darkest. Wow that immediately sounds so much easier for some reason. Is it not essentially the same?
Which way should I aim to go tomorrow in the cast room? I think I need to pick one and focus on one so I don't get confused and end up in a mess again.