Is there a rule to how much a value has to be for a drawing to start looking like a 3d form?
>>7860224value itself does not matter, just the level of contrast between your midtones, lights, and darks. your photo looks like shit because there's no white in it to imply light. you'd want to erase some charcoal on the sclera, the reflection on the pupil, the tip of the nose, and the cheeks.
>>7860224Value isn't what makes a drawing 3D, and if you think it is, you need to study your fundies more.
>>7860224lmaooooooo
Yes, if you can easily identify the core shadow as dark and the lights as lighter. If I were to color pick the lights and shadow from this image they’d look very similar and mushy, with no dark and light color too.
>>7860224in a round about way, yes. if the values are too close together it will be washed out. stark contrasts amplify shapes.
>>7860224The amount of value isn't relevant, you can get away with having literally 2 values. Just look at any typical hacky stencil art traced from a photo.The problem with your picture is that there is no clear direction where the light is coming from. Areas of light and shadow seem random, or undefined. A possible cause is a bad reference. Flat boring studio lighting doesn't make for the best refs, but if the ref has really nice and clear shadows even a bad artist should be able to make a decent drawing out of it.For a drawing to look 3D, the shading needs to be consistent, clearly defined and logical. The rest is perspective and construction (not strictly values related).All of this you can get from a reference, like the drawer of the OP image tried to. If the end result doesn't look good, it's either a bad ref, or a failure in observation. Not because there's not enough value.
>>7860224loooooooooooooooooooooool