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Tom, your explanation was superb! I taught beginning figure painting for years and always lit the model from one side to create light and shadow patterns. Why? Because if you got the values right, there was instantaneous form. Two values, light and shadow, would give the illusion of 3 dimensions. With all the other value changes ( core shadow, reflected light, middle tone, highlight, etc) added, a simplified structure becomes the complex rendering of a specific being appearing
3-dimensional.
The use of all-over ambient light makes it much harder to create the appearance of 3-dimensions, as it tends to flatten the form, so you have to be very subtle and diligent with the value changes. My examples here are William Merritt Chase (ambient light) and Zhaoming Wu (strong single light source).
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