Tyger sketches

[Tygerson]

nice study on the planes of the face there! So, you know that soft edges you written about in dark teal green? Do you know why it is soft?

Realizing what makes for soft edges shadows helped me a great deal, so there :)
nice gestures!

Okay, you know the answer, but are having me dig it out. Totally respect that. I really had to think about this all day! Hopefully this is correct. I think the edges are soft because it's a cast shadow, and the light isn't a point source.

Theoretically perfect point source = sharp shadow



Disk or other shape source = softer shadow
Shadow gets softer as source gets bigger (but I wasn't up to drawing another diagram for comparison)



I guess you'd also get a sharp shadow from a ginormously wide laser beam in a vacuum, since all the rays are parallel, but that doesn't come up too much in real life.