>>5746793The ellipse is a common simplification: when you put a ball on a flat surface with one source of light, often the light will reflect so as to mostly create an ellipse.
A white ball on a pitch black floor with no wall/sky and the shadow will be mostly uniform. I'm pretty sure you can try to sets things up on Blender (or in real life).
But in reality, things are more complex: the blue of the sky is a source of light, the surrounding walls will reflect lights too: this will slightly alter the value of the shadow, and also the temperature/colors: the blue of the sky is cool, so the up facing planes will be slightly bluiesh. Walls will reflect warmer sunlights, so shadow planes facing those walls will be a touch warmer
Drawing spheres is an *excellent* exercice. If you go deep enough, you can practice pretty much everything from it (edges, values, drawing, planes, etc.)
So obviously, yes, the exercice can be hard, but that's definitely not a waste of time.
