how do you know how to shade your drawings?

Question

how can you tell where to put shading in your drawings? when i do it it comes out disgusting

Answer 1

Practice Practice Practice. =p Draw from real life a lot, and pay particular attention to the lights and darks. And start with simpler objects. Squinting your eyes helps you see where the darks and lights are. And draw in black and white so that you are only focusing on the lights and the darks not the colors. The more you draw, the better you get. :)

It also helps to have a clear idea of your slight source before you start to shade. And knowing that objects will reflect light onto surfaces, and that areas are darker on plane changes helps. :)

Answer 2

Try drawing the light source and then draw arrows to show the direction of light. Remember that light normally goes in straight lines. If it hits something then there should be a shadow. Also, carefully observe things around you. Good luck and don't get discouraged. Try to have fun with it.

Answer 3

It's already been pretty much said, but I'll go ahead with my answer anyway:

We know the general shape of a face, a box, a tree, etc, where all the 'dents' are, so that bit is easy enough.
Now where is the light coming from? Left, right, up, down? The parts closest to the 'light' are obviously well seen, the further away, the darker it gets.
But, look at different objects near a lamp for example, you will notice that sometimes, depending upon what the object is made from, and how it is shaped, that the light and dark sometimes appears in places you might not expect.
Visit my site, and have a look at the pieces I have done, and in particular the last two on the "War page", they illustrate light and dark for you.

If you have any more questions, then be my guest and contact me either through 360, Y/A or my site, I will be more than happy to help you.

Answer 4

The only real answer is to practice drawing from real life. Make a LOT of quick sketches by capturing large areas of light and shade. You don't have to be subtle at this point, just quick. These fast sketches train your eye to find the most important elements of the subject and lay them down on paper.

Later, as you develop this skill, when you take the time for more serious drawing, you will lay down these elements, first, then work on the subtleties later.

These two steps are great training to help you draw subjects from memory and provide you with the eye to shade your drawings successfully. There are no shortcuts that you can learn by just reading a paragraph or two. You have got to do the work by practicing as often as you can. Only time will improve your skills.

Answer 5

My drawing instructor kept telling me, "Draw what you see - like this..." and then would do the shading/contour/whatever. Problem was, I didn't understand what that meant.

Drawing what registers on your eyeball is one thing; in a way it's almost too simple. I wasn't paying attention to my *perception* of the thing, but to my *concept* of it. The link below lays it out better than I ever could. My experience has been that Betty Edwards got it right.

"Think! How you gonna think and hit at the same time?" - Yogi Berra.

Answer 6

Start with a really light pencil. You need to lay out some lines from the lightsource of the object on the page. Think of how the light would be falling on the object and make the lines away from the light a little heavier.

Study objects with a single light on them. Takes lots of looking.

Using really light pencil, or tiny tiny dots of ink, you can slowly build up the darkness and vary the shadow. It can be 'thinned' at the edges.
Also you canuse very soft pencil, or charcoal to smear in some soft shadows. And use an eraser. Erasing is really a good way to do it.

Kind of something that needs to be practices alot. Like constantly sketching.

Answer 7

Just think of your light source and where it is coming from. Is it behind, below, to left or right? use a light on an object of your choice and learn how the light falls/hits/reflects off that object. You have to practise over and over but it will come.Sometimes shadows are large or small it all depends on position of the light and intensity of the light. always start lightest to darkest, you may even want to sop with a small shadow and take a break for a moment and then look at perspective of object.

Answer 8

What i used to do, before i got the hang of it... was to shine a light on an object similar to the one i was drawing, and physically see where the highlights and shadows would fall. After you get the general idea from that, i'd draw a circle on my paper (lightly) to show where my light source was coming from. once you get relationship between where light would hit and not hit, you eventrally figure out where shadows go.

Best way, for me, was just to look at everyday objects and look at shadows vs. direction of light source.