Tutorial Making Shadows

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Mctwisp
Posts: 123
Joined: Mon Jul 12, 2010 8:33 pm

Tutorial Making Shadows

Post by Mctwisp »

Hello, one more time. Like I promised, here's the tutorial. Today I'll show you, guys, how to do shadows in your drawings.


Shadows For Begginings

Materials:
- Pencil(I did it with a 4B).
- Eraser.
- Smudge.
- Photoshop(optional).

For doing shadows, you need to use a little thing, call Gradient.

What's a Gradient?



Image
"Gradient" or gradient color is a sequence of continuous tones,
and may be limited or unlimited. That is, the area where two colors are
superposed, each with their intensities, forming a smooth transition between
colors. The tonality "gradient" represents the variation of colors ranging from
stronger to milder.



It could be something like this:

Image

You just need to scratch the paper slightly with the pencil and keep swelling from left to right.

I'll use a drawing what I did today to show you how to do shadows.

Boys and girls, control yourselves to not melt, alright? You was be warned.

Here's the example:

Image


First of ALL, imagine a sun in the drawing.

You can use this little sun if you want. x3

Image

Choose whatever the sun position you want to put. You'll use the sun like a guide to guide you where the shadows need to show up.

It's not to draw a sun! It's to use your imagination!

I chose the sun will be in the superior left side of the drawing.

Start to scratch the pencil very weak (not to the point of not seeing the scratch), in ALL the corners you can imagine that has shadows.

Will be this(or mostly):

Image

P.S: I already darkened the tail, because his back shadow is covering his tail.

P.S.S: You can use the Gradient in the eyes too, like I did.



Now you must do all this again (yeah, again), but this time, with a little more strength.
Keep doing gradients in the weak gradient what you already did, but on a smaller area, closer
to the contour lines.

Will be something like this:

Image


Now is time to use the Smudge.
The Smudge is a special pencil. What's it? It's a very long paper, rolled in a great pressure,
until it become in the form of a pencil.
Image

Look in this drawing if you can see the difference between With Smudge and Without Smudge:

Image


Use the Smudge also as a pencil: weakely and slowly in the weak shadows and stronger in the strong shadows.

Using the Smudge causes blotches and blots out, and within the drawing. Fix them using a eraser to delete them.

Here's the result:

Image


Now the Photoshop Optional:

For the people who use Photoshop or have it, you can use it to darken your drawing to make it clearer.

I just need to open the Photoshop, Cilck in Image/Adjustments/Levels...

Image

Then, move the arrows to adjust, as you like, the dark densities of the drawing.

Image


The results will be this:

Image


Badabang, badabing, badaBOOM!
Image

There's the tutorial Making Shadows!

I hope you liked! See ya! =D


ATENTION!

The results of this tutorial is varied from the artist to another. If your drawing is not
looks like or got worse, the cure for this, is PRACTICE! You should follow all the safety necessary
precautions when you handling all the materials and do not forget to ask permission to use and one adult
to supervise you while using. All materials can be purchased in shops or stationery design professionals
around the corner. I was told that you can improvise a bond paper rolling it to use as if you can not
find a Smudge, but I never really tried if it replace a Smudge.

Thank you very much.
"It's not a good thing to be remembered, and the worst is I remember." - McTwisp
0404

Re: Tutorial Making Shadows

Post by 0404 »

ah`ha, thanks a lot. I haven't pratcied for few days, what a busy week that I got.
Before doing shadow on bunny, I think I should practice shadows on cubes and cylinders :p
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Mctwisp
Posts: 123
Joined: Mon Jul 12, 2010 8:33 pm

Re: Tutorial Making Shadows

Post by Mctwisp »

texascat018 wrote:ah`ha, thanks a lot. I haven't pratcied for few days, what a busy week that I got.
Before doing shadow on bunny, I think I should practice shadows on cubes and cylinders :p
Yeah, but some people already want to do in the drawings and don't practice in cubes and cilindries. I'm one of them. x3
"It's not a good thing to be remembered, and the worst is I remember." - McTwisp
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CY_Law
Posts: 244
Joined: Tue Jun 15, 2010 6:11 am
Location: The south tip of the Asia continent

Re: Tutorial Making Shadows

Post by CY_Law »

You totally should, it's ironically the fastest "shortcut" you could find to practice your toning, shading and shadow on.
Image

It's often fundamental for, well, beginners who are willing to invest in some art supplies to get atleast 4/5B, HB, 2B and 2H. That's often enough, but as time goes you might get better at controlling your hand pressure to manipulate the tone without switching around too much, but you're still encouraged to use them for the sake of accuracy. (I almost never use any type of eraser when shading and toning, any mistake would be easier if you simply smudge it off with your finger, diffusing the tone, it's natural that your object is presented in atleast 30% grey by itself, because in almost all the case, complete white never exists unless it's highlight, or a very bright object itself)

Image
We generally use this easy-to-understand chart, 10~100%, and the typical 3 ways of shading/toning, which are usable in almost all situation.
Never ever make the mistake I did, cross hatching(3rd and 4th rows) with lines perpendicular to each other is never encouraged, that's texturing instead of shading.

There's hard shadow, diffuse shadow, cast shadow, object shadow(shading) etc, there's also point light(eg. bulb, spot light), non-point source light (eg. Sun), etc which can all affect how a shadow will look like.

And the technique of casting a shadow, using lines and perspective, is both accurate and extremely useful to make your work convincing.

I can never stress this enough, understand the form of the subject first, its texture, its volume, how it'll react to light, how light react on the object, how light works, using the info and shading can even give a hint on what the object's color is.

Shading and shadow is a very useful and powerful technique you could pick up and implement into your drawing, it conveys the color, the shape and the volume of an object on a 2D medium.

Image
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Mctwisp
Posts: 123
Joined: Mon Jul 12, 2010 8:33 pm

Re: Tutorial Making Shadows

Post by Mctwisp »

I see. Thanks for the advice.
"It's not a good thing to be remembered, and the worst is I remember." - McTwisp
0404

Re: Tutorial Making Shadows

Post by 0404 »

I NEED FOLD ON CLOTH TUTORIAL!!
not demanding you, just desperate..
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Onlythebassist
Posts: 247
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Location: Angleterre

Re: Tutorial Making Shadows

Post by Onlythebassist »

This is one of the many things they don't teach you in Art class in the UK. I swear I learn more about improving my technique and style from the Internet than any teacher I've encountered.

Anyway thanks for this tutorial, pencil shadows and shading are an area I really want to explore in future :D
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