How to Shade Your Pencil Drawings
Jun 14, 2009 Drawing
An important part of drawing realistically is shading: the variation in value from shadows to highlights that describe the shape of something. By improving your shading you can greatly improve the quality of your drawings. All you need to do are three simple things: control your pencil, understand light, and blend!
There are many ways to shade a drawing, but for the purpose of this article, I will focus on smooth shading. These tips apply to all subjects, but I’ve also done a more detailed tutorial on how to shade a sphere.
Control Your Pencil
One of the keys to smooth shading is controlling the pressure of your pencil. For darker shadows you will need to press hard, then slowly lessen the pressure as you work away from the shadow. Keep your pencil strokes even and regular, don’t scribble. This is easier if you hold your pencil at more of an angle, using the side of the lead to draw. Also, try to keep your pencil strokes going in the same direction, this will give you smoother results.
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Understanding Light
It’s also important to understand the way light works. In your drawings, you will generally have one light source., which affects the location of highlights and the direction of shadows. The highlight is the place where the light hits the object directly, and will be the lightest value. The area facing away from the light source will be in shadow, and everything between the highlight and shadow is considered the midtones. As well as a highlight, midtones and shadow, objects will also show some reflected light. This happens when light passing an object bounces off another surface and hits the shadowed side of the object. These values blend into eachother smoothly. The only place you will find a hard edge is when there is a cast shadow. In portraits, you will often find cast shadows under the chin or under the nose. The cast shadow is darkest closer to the source of the shadow, and fades out as you get farther away. This can be applied to most drawing subjects, but is easiest to demonstrate with a sphere.
Blending
The last step to smooth shading is blending. This can be done with a blending stick. Use your blending stick just like you use your pencil: on an angle in short, regular strokes. You can also try blending in small circles. Start at the lighest value and work towards the shadows. If your blending stick gets too dark, wipe it on a clean sheet of paper, or press it into your kneaded eraser. After blending, you may find that you want to go back and darken some of your shadows, or carefully lighten your highlights.
Learning how to shade well isn’t difficult, but it will take practice. With each drawing you’ll find yourself getting better. Remember, don’t be too timid wtih your shadows; a nice dark shadow will give your drawing depth.
If you found this helpful, check out some of my drawing tutorials, or subscribe to my RSS feed to stay updated on my articles!
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Related posts:
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Tags: art tips, blending, drawing tips, getting started, shading
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June 29th, 2009 at 10:21 am
[...] have already talked about smooth, blended shading, which is what most people are familiar with. Today I am going to touch on some other shading [...]
July 19th, 2009 at 8:12 am
[...] the grid lines and begin to block in the basic values with a ‘B’ pencil, using these shading techniques. Many people work from light to dark, but in general I prefer to work dark to light. By starting [...]
September 4th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
[...] using your B pencil, start to very lightly shade the area around the highlight. Work your way to the edge of the sphere and the edge of the [...]
October 14th, 2009 at 8:03 am
im having to shade for homework an apple i find it very difficult my shading looks RUBBISH i need a highh mark any help?
October 14th, 2009 at 10:53 am
Hi Jodie! Without seeing what kinds of problems you’re having, it’s hard to say what might help! My advice would be to shade very lightly at first and work on drawing so that you can’t see individual pencil marks. Once you can do that, slowly add more layers to make your shading darker. You want to practice the gradation: gradually going from light to dark. That involves learning how to control the pressure you’re putting on your pencil. Feel free to email me a picture of your drawing and I can see if I can give you any more pointers! info@learntoart.com
October 25th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
[...] we start shading! At this point, I usually focus on the face and ignore everything else. Resist the urge to start [...]
November 27th, 2009 at 11:31 pm
i have realy leant alot from this site
February 21st, 2010 at 8:25 am
[...] can draw
February 25th, 2010 at 8:26 am
I draw mj(Michael Jackson) and I could never do his mouth and I can’t shade at all!!! I need somebody to come to my house and teach me lolololololololol but obviously not the people on the Internet but I want to make my drawings more realistic like u could tell it’s mj if u people all saw them but I want to shade better and draw like exactly my drawings are a tiny bit diff then the original but I think they are still good their all hanging on my walls I’ve got five!!!
If anyone on here hates him u dong need to leave mean comments… Cuz u know nothing I have his whole life biography printed out and kept safely
welll byeeee!!!
March 3rd, 2010 at 12:07 pm
Shading definitely takes practice, keep at it and you’ll find yourself getting better!