Tutorials

Shading is one of the most important skills you'll learn as an artist, but to understand how it works, you first need to know a little bit about how light works!

In every picture, there is a light source. The most natural light source is, of course, the sun! But whatever your light source is, you have to decide where it is in relation to your subject. Is it high in the sky, right above the creature's head? Or is it off to the side, in the middle of the sky? Here for my sphere, I dediced that my light source would be in the middle of the sky and to the right.

Something to remember before you start is that, no matter where your light source is, you should always be consistant with your shading and highlighting throughout the whole picture. If you don't, people will be able to tell that you weren't quite sure about what you were doing.

The reason I decided to shade a sphere here is because it is one of the easiest objects to shade, and at the same time, it teaches you how shading really works. So when you're practicing, you should start on a sphere!

The first thing you should do when shading a picture is to look at the object and imagine what shape it is in real life. What parts of the object are furthest away from the light source? What parts are closest? The parts that are furthest away are going to be the parts that you'll shade, and the parts that are closest are the parts you'll highlight.