Learn to SHADE!!!!!!

Alrighty, here it is. Post your line work or unfinished piece for others to learn to brush.

Likewise, post your results!

First a rundown of the basic concepts of shading. Then two examples of how tipit members shade.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The problem for most people when shading is not how to apply the paint...though that can be an issue, but the starting point for most is WHERE to apply. IE, when shading, how do you know where to put your lines or shadows, etc. I prefer the term shadows because living items never have LINES. they have mass and areas and shapes, but not lines. If you see lines in your shading you have by default become unrealistic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The key is light. Most people give no thought to light though they look at its effects every day. But what makes an attractive picture attractive is often the interplay of light and shadow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For instance, think of a snowy day. What color is the snow? Of course most will say white. Some will say clear (the braniacs who worry about it being crystals), some will say brown (if they live in a nasty area). In reality most snow is not any one color when you look at it but TONS of colors. It is often shades of grey, blue, brown etc., depending on how the light hits it. while the dominant color is white, various parts of it might look grey or even nearly black depending on the lighting at the time, shadows, etc. As an artist it is necessary to pay attention to all of the shades of things.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When trying to shade, to give depth, to give detail, the key is to see how the light hits the object. IF you are drawing an object from your mind you have to imagine how the light is hitting .For intance, in the example above I did not have reference material, so I imagined how light would hit. Same with the centurion's arm. But it can often be helpful to look at actual examples of lighting before starting if you are unfamiliar with how light works.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The key to understanding light is to realize

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

a. Where the light source, or sources are

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

b. How shapes cast shadows.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When doing art work you have to decide where your light source is in relation to your subject matter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For instance, look at this circle, and then the same circle that I shaded (tougher than it looks, doh!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first circle is flat. It is defined by a line and a plane. Even without the grey shading it would be a circle due simply to a line. It is called a shape, but has implied depth. It could be flat, or a globe. It is undefined.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The second one is clearly a globe or ball. The light is coming from the upper right, and slightly to the front. Notice there are no defining lines (or shouldn't be). Each tone flows into the other. While some drawings use harsh shadows or reduce colors to two values, most images have shades of tones that flow together to make the illusion of depth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So the first step in shading is to pick your light source. Then imagine how the shadows would be cast, and then render them through a process of

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

a. Painting base tones

 

 

 

b. Painting darker tones

 

 

 

c. Painting lighter tones

 

 

 

d. Blending

 

 

 

e. Adding specular highlights (the very bright round spot is glare from the light source. This often happens with largely smooth, rounded, reflective surfaces. It can happen on the tight parts of skin, or on glass, etc.).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Things get more complicated when dealing with more complex objects. Here again we have the lighting coming from the top, but more to the front right than from way right. Notice how jutting areas cast shadows etc. An object in HARD bright light that juts out a lot will cast a harder shadow, more defined, less blended.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Soft curves make soft shadows. (Notice engangles pic for an example lol).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Try looking at some various pictures, photos, whatever, and seeing if you can figure how where the light source is. Is there more than one?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You will find yourself learning a lot about shading.

And here are two walkthroughs in two different styles.

Ok well I don't know that much about the different arm muscles, but here is a quick 10minute version of what I do when I brush something...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I outline it with the pen tool.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stroke the path.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Turn my brush to about 12% opacity. Hard round, 9px brush, usually.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then brush on some colors. I select the base color as my foreground and background. Then I slightly lighten and darken each one, and start brushing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After that I smudge them around to make them fill a little better. Added some noise on this one too to give it a more skin like texture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then I delete the black line and clean up the edges.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can't really see the noise in this small version, but it's there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, yeah. That's a quick rundown of how I do it.

Here is my earlier attempt at it that I posted previously

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I didn't focus on each muscle fibre as did Keiphus, because I wanted a softer feel to it rather than a hugely ripped guy. In Roman times they were tough, but probably didn't lift traditional free weights (then again, maybe they did, lol who knows).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I shade I tend to take the base color as my main also. But rather than using the pen tool (I hate the pen tool :) ) I use the usual magic wand selection tool to highlight the arm, etc. Besides, I don't like the hard lines of the pen tool when it is finished. I want it to look soft, fleshy, real. Because the selection is not always perfect this might require playing with the threshold on the hsb colors for the wand I also at times have to touch up the edge of the arm with a soft eraser. You may want to save the mask in order to make sure you can go back and adjust things later.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For shading I use just a brush on 100 percent softness and 85 percent transparency and brush on a few shades darker. Then a few shades darker than that to define the muscle curves. And then one more shade to get the dark shadows under projecting armor etc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next I pick the lighter highlights, and paint them in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then rather than using smudge (or noice, or dodge and burn, though I have used all of those), I take a middle color and brush over it with light strokes along the hard lines to get a smooth look to it. High transparency is necessary for this part especially.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I find I like the look better if I avoid dodge and burn or smudge, though I used to use them quite a bit and I see a lot of folks get good effects with them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The key thing on the neck, which was more defined due to prominent tendons etc., is to pick where you want the tendens to run. Paint those immediately in a lighter color, then shade the darker around them. Smooth as above.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally up the contrast (second image)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hm....in that zoomed up image it is painfully obvious I need to rework the hands :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is a sample of the process in action (kind of an odd pic, but shows the steps) . In this case I have no linework done. I just feel out the shape as I work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I start with a plain color, and get the basic shape.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then I put in basic areas, starting to blend them in....This is where you get the basic shape and slowly refine it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then I start to paint details, formed the nose, reshaped the head, etc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next I finished the details, and did the harder shadow, upped the contrast, etc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally with some changes to saturation on the lips and some skin color adjustments....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are some drawing to use.

By Tttia

.

By Orchiare

By Nadril

By Eccentric

Err nvm.

I actually thought this was going to be another post. On another forum I used to go to, for programming they'd have little schools run by people and every couple days something new would be taught and people would have homework.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sorry to spam with this but I think it could be a great idea.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We could have a pixel school, 3d school, vector, space, and so forth schools.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This coudl really help out I think.

wow that would be awsome lol :P

heh, i might think about doing a "school" lol. hopefully these schools will help the forum out as a whole :)

EDIT: haha, caught you before you said nvm :)

lol :lol:

oooo thats meeee!!!!! i wanna learn to brush..... here i go draw something real fast :D

Are there any programs that can record what I'm doing on my screen for say.... 5 minutes?

Are there any programs that can record what I'm doing on my screen for say.... 5 minutes?

This is in no way what you want but it's cool, you can draw on here until your ink runs out and it records it and other people can watch.

http://www.imaginationatwork.com/Imagine?_nolivecache

well theres camtasia, but it lags you nicely, i heard even with 1gig+ ram, but you can give it a shot

Ok well I don't know that much about the different arm muscles, but here is a quick 10minute version of what I do when I brush something...

I outline it with the pen tool.

Stroke the path.

Turn my brush to about 12% opacity. Hard round, 9px brush, usually.

Then brush on some colors. I select the base color as my foreground and background. Then I slightly lighten and darken each one, and start brushing.

After that I smudge them around to make them fill a little better. Added some noise on this one too to give it a more skin like texture.

Then I delete the black line and clean up the edges.

You can't really see the noise in this small version, but it's there.

So, yeah. That's a quick rundown of how I do it.

(Portion moved to first post)

AS for recording....try a program called Satori Photo xl . It is free if you can find it still, and has several unique features such as saving all of your actions in a sliding undo or a seperate file. You can adjust the speed of play back. It also works in somewhat of a hybrid vector format allowing it to reduce ram load.

I however use corel photopaint or classic painter (I really want the real painter but the cash just isn't there).

here's a pic that i abandoned because it ended up looking stupid, but it could still b useful for this post(to practise shading)...

Great Orchiare, another to try!

geez tttia those muscles looked like you just pasted a real guys arm on there lol :lol:

i actully have a vector i did back a while ago, its not realy that good (i.e the brushing sucks :P) but the vector part isn't bad

I'll post it later today :)

this is a great idea with skools looks like u guys are starting off nicly, i hope someone makes a pixel school cuz i can pixel basic but i need 2 learn shapes and body figures ect cuz sometimes my ppl look wack... any way keep it up fellas

Can I try and do pixel arms on that person? :P .

lol if you really have to lg...but it is a brushing school. Tell ya what, why not do both?

here's a pic that i abandoned because it ended up looking stupid, but it could still b useful for this post(to practise shading)...

 

 

 

ok if i try color it in ? (probly won't brush cant find Adobe Photoshop between my sets of cds)

download the gimp :) not a bad little free program.

Here is the link to the free Gimp runtime environment and the download itself (you need both).

http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html

It is free, open source, ported from linux/unix :)

Pixia is also free

http://park18.wakwak.com/~pixia/download.htm

Actually I just tried pixia again and I LOVE its color control. It also has zooms with the scroll wheel which I can't live without after corel.

I might be using the program a lot. The controls are not user friendly though......least figuring em out.

enjoy

can i do pixel on ur drawing orchi?

here's a pic that i abandoned because it ended up looking stupid, but it could still b useful for this post(to practise shading)...

 

 

 

question: How do you make that nice outline? I can only outline with pixel, and if i try a brush it ends up being unsmooth

all i know is it is not pixel lol

Pen tool....

I started coloring it at school, I post the finished version tomorrow.

heres my interesting vector i did a while ago :P (just the drawing)

(ps: sorry bout it having white bg, did it a while ago and saved as png)

any tips on how to get it brushed (its a gun :P) are welcome.

Here's a little sketch that I outlined in photoshop on a whim. Feel free to colour it. :)

well since most of the posts were ONLY by geezers I decided to change the title to draw in more folks.

I also moved some of the posts to the first one so that people can get right to the meat of the lessons.

Something I did at work when I was bored, the original artwork was done by Feng Zhu.