How to Shade a Drawing
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Figure Drawing Fundamentals

How to Shade a Drawing

3.2M
Mark as Completed

How to Shade a Drawing

3.2M
Mark as Completed

Use the photo of Yoni or choose another pose from my pose sets to draw a fully shaded figure. I recommend drawing large so that you have room to shade some details. In my example, I’ll be drawing on an 18×24 inch paper. Also, don’t rush it. A student in most ateliers will spend at least 3 hours on a figure drawing. Personally, I recommend longer, especially if this is one of your first long figure drawings.

Newest
May Berry
Practiced this for 10 days. I found a reference photo with a higher contrast. I overlayed the construction drawing with tracing paper and made 2 versions of the same reference photo: 1 black and white, and the other blurred. I still struggle with seeing value and applying it to the drawing. I might need to do some practice from the beginner course.
Rachel Dawn Owens
I think you’re on the right track. It’s really nice how you simplified and contained the shapes of value. The proportions look great too. Below is a demo on how I might break down the shading from this reference- If I was using graphite or charcoal, my final drawing would have maybe came out more organic looking. Processing the drawing this way made it come out rather stiff, but I wanted to make the ideas clear. Learning to draw means learning about how light works. It can seem complicated at first, but it all makes sense if you think about it. Light shines down on the subject and then bounces all over the forms and then back towards the viewer. Drawing is all about creating the illusion of 3d forms on a 2d surface. Understanding value is a big part of that and it looks like you’re getting it. Great study! Keep it up 👍
Joseph Cicero
Hey Guys, me again ;). I've been focusing heavily on mannequins lately, trying to incorporate gesture and mannequins more succinctly. But I thought I'd keep practicing my rendering as well. This was another long one. I took a chance with the composition (as I haven't started studying that) and I'm happy with it overall. This one was a challenge because of the multiple light sources and the subject being very muscular so lots of shading ball type forms. As always critiques are welcome!
Joseph Cicero
I posted this on the Digital Painting Fundamentals class but I wanted to post it here as well. This is another study trying to improve my blending, edge control, and add more details. As always critiques are welcome!
Rachel Dawn Owens
This is great! You got the proportions perfect and the anatomy looks nice. If you want to take this to the next level and emphasize the top of the figure, you could darken the lower torso and legs. I added a soft gradient across the figure to create a focal area around the head and chest. I like your painting. I hope this helps. Keep it up!
Joseph Cicero
A couple more studies, I'm trying to get better with blending values and edge control to show structure or soft areas. If anyone has brush recommendations for Clip Studio for shading, I'm all ears! I also attempted drawing a figure completely from imagination. I'm happy enough with it but that's certainly where knowing some more anatomy will help. Any critiques welcome!
John James
3mo
I think your observation is false in the picture 2. The light by far is not as bride on the belly and leg than on the booba and face. head and upper chest is clearly like spotlide so you have to tone everything else down. if you have more question follow my youtube channel bendergpt i do mostly inking and or drawings. Dont forget spotlights cast hard shadows so you can really clear edge then and everything outside it you can make it soft it will make a great composition if you even like exaggorate it.
Melanie Scearce
I think your shading is looking good. I can't speak on Clip Studio, but I did want to point out that the extended leg on your figure from imagination looks like it's backwards. The shape you used for the knee looks like shorthand for the back of the knee (popliteal fossa), and the bulge of the calf is higher on the left side of her leg opposed to the right. Nice work overall, it's so difficult to draw a figure from imagination!
Michael
3mo
After a very long time, here are my shaded figures - both in charcoal on newsprint. I followed along with Stan drawing Yoni, and definitely understood the process by the time I was doing my own attempt. However I often jumped from shadow mapping to details and vice versa. I would say that my own attempt took me 10+ hours to finish with much of that spent measuring (my arm was sore for days from holding up the pencil...). One thing I found was that the charcoal powder I used didn't seem to go very dark at all, darkest being the lower half of the figure. My linework and pencil holding technique need work - lines often didn't turn out the way I wanted them to. When doing my own attempt I realised (perhaps too late) that you really don't need much to indicate something, Stan does mention this in one of the lessons but I think it can go much further. I looked into Lane Brown's work with much softer edges and tone, and I think that gave me the will to finish the drawing. I'll go into Stan's portrait course next before the anatomy course, but I want to pump out as many figures as I can! I'm not sure I'll do another fully rendered figure for a long time though (quantity over quality)... Thanks to all the instructors including @Rachel Dawn Owens, @Jesper Axelsson and @Melanie Scearce for your feedback!
Rachel Dawn Owens
This. Is. Incredible. These are awesome drawings! Moving too quickly into detail is perfectly ok. All you need is more mileage. You’re right that you should strive for quantity of drawings to get better. You learn the most in the first hour of a drawing. Learning to sit on a drawing for 10+ hours is also a valuable skill. Think of it like your max lift if you were a weightlifter. Its good to know how far you can go with a drawing and it looks like you can go very far. This is great, I love how you rendered these. Heres a demo of about how I go about it. It’s like I’m bringing the drawing into focus. I start light and fuzzy and sharpen the focus as I go, waiting for the end to add the darkest marks. Good luck and keep going 👍
Joseph Cicero
First attempt at a 5 value shading. Overall, I'm happy with how it turned out but those dark and light halftones were very difficult to separate at times. Critiques are always welcome.
Giorgi Karkuzashvili
The key is to repeat it weekly(daily)
@maximilienle2d
Hi, I tried doing the Yoni drawing. I didn't have any newsprint or smooth paper so I did it on normal 90 gsm and with a stump since I did not have charcoal powder. It was a good experience and I want to try again to do something in charcoal with my own style but I will wait to buy better materials for that (to get those smooth details, the clean background and the archival properties).
Joseph Cicero
A few more shadow studies. Critiques always welcome!
maciek szczech
Unique and I ❤️ these studies.
Joseph Cicero
Hey Everyone, I've been working a little through Dorian's shading course and here are a couple of my attempts at the "notan" version of shading. I'm not quite ready for full rendering so I'm just working on separating lights and darks. I know there some instances of reflected light that I chose to not shade, some of that was because I thought it looked better and some is I wasn't sure where the light source was coming from. Any critique is always welcome!
Emma X
5mo
My second attempt at shading in a figure drawing, I don't think it's as good as my first, feels flatter and the lines aren't as clear, it's kinda "muddy"? Any advice appreciated! I'll include my early line art and the reference photo.
Emma X
5mo
First time trying to shade in a figure drawing with pencil! It's way harder than it looks xD Would love any and all feedback!
@amaka45
5mo
Hey Emma, nice job for being your first time. I would recommend checking out the shading assignments here on Proko of shading an egg and a pear. You do not necessarily have to pay for the full course if you are a starving artist like most of us, lol! Try starting with a simple shape with a singular light source. I would give more advice, but I too am just now learning to add tone to my drawings. Hope this helps!   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vapw6n6FyU&list=PLnSiPyMK9PTyRitLtaj6JIbRF5LttP6Mz&index=132   https://www.proko.com/course-lesson/the-perfect-egg/assignments
Sofi
10mo
Shaded figure drawing! Critiques welcome.
Noe Luis
10mo
Jan 17, 2024 Shading the figure. Separating the light and the dark tones.
Kiyoshi Inoue
I realized my proportions were wrong over half way through my drawing, but any tips about my shading would be appreciated.
Samuel Sanjaya
My full figure drawing, I don't know much about anatomy yet, so I tried my best to look at the forms. Any feedback/ critiques will be greatly appreciated.
Martha Muniz
Hi Samuel! Continue practicing gesture and pushing the motion of the figure, even when doing more rendered work, as it helps you get more accurate or informed drawings. As you start shading while learning anatomy, keep going back to observing what you see: break down the image into light and dark groups at the start. There will be changes of value within the shadows, but they will still be darker than areas in the light. I drew out some notes for you I hope are helpful.
@nick_laze
1yr
My very first attempt at drawing full figures and shading it. I would like some feedback (also I should try to draw a full page figure). Thanks :)
@pmak22
1yr
My first attempt at shading a full figure with this technique. I'm noticing that some of my foundational underlying lines that plot out the muscles are not as accurate as I would like, and those veins are....a challenge, esp when you make it one of the last things to work on and you want to wrap up. I'm thinking things feel a little....rubbery or overly smooth with some of the shading transitions. I'll have to figure out how to handle that as well.
Matthew K
1yr
This is overall very nice and you should be happy with it. There's a confidence in your lines that shows through. I'd suggest you work on expressing that confidence while being much more gently with placing your initial lines. That will likely give you the results your seeking. This will keep the form from feeling outlined and let it blend with the background, and allow some of the more subtle shadows be lighter and more realistic.
Samantha Maggard
Nice drawing. Are you using digital? I always find digital art fabulous for animation but it always comes off rubbery to me when attempting a traditional style.
Eveline Rupenko
Hello! Here is my first try for this assigment! Think I Still lack the anatomy knowledge to convert it into decent structure. Plan to make a copy of Stan's demo fron the next lesson and make a secon pass on this assigment.
Jesper Axelsson
Really nice! I actually think the structure is the strongest part of this drawing, so don't worry about that. - The structure and rendering looks pretty good, but the values are a bit confusing. Some of the values in the light are as dark as the darker parts of the shadows. And some of the values in the shade are as light as the lightest parts of the lights. As a rule of thumb, the lightest dark should be darker than the darkest light. Check out this video Mind-Blowing Realistic Shading Tricks. One important part of shading is value control. Are you familiar with values? If think this could be a great time to go on a short detour from the figure drawing course, and do some value studies. Dorian Iten has a great video on value studies How to Organize Values . You can get it for free in the Proko Course Sampler. For me it helped to start by doing 2-value studies. Then when I felt like I had a good grasp of that, I moved to 3-value studies. Then 4, then 5. For the 5 value study you might use this process: first a 2-value separation. Then add a midtone (3rd value), then add a darker light (4th value) and a lighter dark (5th value). Pick or take photos of a subject you like to make the exercise even more enjoyable. Having good value control and having a good grasp of value grouping will really help when shading. Plus I think you'll find that you can do some really cool stuff with it. - Another thing that has helped me when shading is to clearly define the shadow shapes in a lay-in. Making sure that they're not ambigous, but clearly designed. Making the terminator edge soft, and giving a hard edge to cast shadows and the end of a form in shadow, gives a clear effect of light right away. Hope this helps :) Let me know if you have any questions.
Dwight
2yr
I've tried using my manniquinization knowledge to jump of the deep end, but I'm not sure I swam. I also tried a less line-based core shadow, which you can also comment on.
@cimaar
2yr
The drawing is really cool, if a bit confusing to me, but then again, the pose is also kind of confusing, it took me a second to realize she is looking at the camera in the floor... I think the proportions are a bit off, since the perspective is so dramatic her feet and lower legs should be a bit bigger in comparison to her torso...
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Founder of Proko, artist and teacher of drawing, painting, and anatomy. I try to make my lessons fun and ultra packed with information.
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