Shading 101

Shading 101

One of the most important things to remember when you're sketching or drawing is, SHADING.  Shading creates perspective for  your drawing.  Look at the example of a rose.  Notice how  it is shaded to show the way the sun is hitting it?  That's  shading.  A good way to practice shading is by writing your  name out on a piece of paper in bubble letters on a piece of  paper of any size.  You can look at my example below. Notice how I wrote it big enough that you could almost  add a picture inside the letters.  That's how you want your  to look too.Now its time to shade your beautifully printed  name!  So you're going to pick a direction that the "sun" it  hitting your name from.  The shadow will be on the  OPPOSITE side of your "sun".  (If you need too, its probably a good idea to draw a sun, just so you don't forget which side its on)                  Now, on the tops of the letters and sides  OPPOSITE to the sun, you'll shade them.  Consult my  example  photo for help.              So know you know the basics for shading.   Picture Shading Pictures are just a bit harder to shade, but after reading this post you'll know how to  shade drawings like a pro.  As always I'll give you examples as we go.  So lets start. First, you must draw your picture.  For this example, I'm going to draw a leaf (because leafs are easy to draw).  So you can draw a  leaf if you want to, or you can be independently creative  and draw something else like a rose or tree, etc.  So to  shade its a good idea if you add a little sun where you  want the sun to be.  I'm going to draw mine in the top left corner.  So now I'm going to  shade my leaf.  My leaf will be lighter on the edge  that is closest to the sun.  But as you  get farther from the sun, your shading should be  getting darker.  So go ahead and shade your leaf,  you can kind of scribble to start out with,  The fine shading comes afterwards.   So you see my leaf, it does look a little bit messy but we still have to do the final shading technique then it will be perfect!  So here's how you fine shade: You lightly color in  all the spaces between scribbles and lightly color over the whole leaf afterwards.