/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

>>4219532
The point of doing values on figures is to achieve volume. Volume mainly (if we are talking without color) is achieved in two ways. Lineweight (forget it for now) and difference between light and shadow.
What I see in your red background lady is that the anatomy is well done, but putting lims as single color makes it impossible to have volume since there is no luminic value difference. i.e. there no part with more light on it and another with less light on it.
A common pitfall is to confuse local color with value. For example, let's say I had a black shirt and I was standing in a park in a sunny day, and a friend was in a dark room with a white shirt. If we were to only do a value drawing, my black shirt would seem "whiter" than my friend in the dark room, even if his shirt was white, for the sole reason that more light is hiting it.

Now, this small novella was just to let you know that when drawing anything with value, you look at the form, the light direction and you do the light, half light, half dark, dark places. The wooden mannequin and quality pencils will help a lot.

As for reading, loomis has got you pretty well covered but it will take a lot of practice plus loomis to achieve a good value drawing.

Pic related. That's called a shitty small sketch. For value training shitty small sketches are your friend. Don't go for beauty. Go for big ugly lights and shadows as you squint your eye in the model. If you don't have a model you need to really imagine a light source.