I’ve been drawing a fair amount of shiny metal lately, what with doing stuff for a furry con whose theme is ‘cyberpunk’. Something interesting I’ve noticed is that I’m no longer content to just draw a black squiggle to notationally say ‘this is chrome’; I find myself casually thinking about what it’d be reflecting, and dropping in a few hints of that.
I don’t really have anything to say beyond that. I guess something else I do in the process of a drawing has become so simple for me that I need to add a new layer of detail to keep things interesting.
It kind of amazes me that one can recognize a reflective surface like chrome without recognizing what it’s reflecting.
If it’s on something highly curved, it’s really not easy to tell what’s being reflected. You can usually get away with a few cheap tricks to say ‘yeah um this is shiny’.