Beginner’s Drawing Guide – How To Shade Your Drawing?

Shading can make a drawing appear three dimensional and create a convincing image. Shading adds depth, contrast, and helps direct the viewer’s eyes to the focal point of your art. When rendering a drawing that communicates volume, shading is absolutely critical. Techniques used for applying shading to an object are quite varied. Each technique produces a different texture and “feel” to the drawing. Shading is the process of adding tonal areas to your drawings and paintings to make them look more life-like. We know what we want our drawing to look like, but can’t quite make it happen. Read all the way to the end you’ll find easy drawing tips to shade your drawing.

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Tips on how to shade your drawing

The drawing medium used may determine the shading technique that is applied in the drawing.

Pressure control

The harder you press down on your pencil, the harder the strokes will be. To have good pressure control, practice shading from one end of your sketchbook to the other while pressing harder and harder until the values get darker gradually.  It’s important to maintain a consistent pressure between each back and forth stroke or each individual stroke.

Shade smoothly

You can do is wear the pencil down until the tip is full or use the side of the lead to draw so your strokes come out thicker.  When you pivot from the wrist, your stroke length is very limited. Instead, try using an overhead grip and pivot from your elbow and shoulder to achieve much longer strokes.

Illusion of light

Shading informs us of the light within a scene. We understand the light within the scene through the use of value and contrast.  Value is the darkness or lightness of a color. Contrast is produced when any difference between elements such as texture, color, size, or value occurs. The intensity of the light determines the contrast of values.

Use cross-hatching to draw quickly

Draw the cross-hatching lines close together to make a densely shaded area on your drawing or spread them apart to make it lighter. Use hatch marks without a second layer to make a lighter shadow.

Use blending for a smooth surface

Practice shading on simple polygon forms, like cubes and spheres before jumping in to shade your drawing.  Blending your shading gives your drawing a smooth and realistic finish and requires the most time.

Erase areas that have bright highlights

Add white pencil or pastel to make solid white areas that pop.  Objects with metallic finishes will have a brighter highlight while objects with a matte finish will look duller.  Work gently with your eraser to lighten the areas in layers to develop a smooth transition from light to dark.

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You can try out the above-mentioned guide to learn how to shade your drawing. Let’s see how can we help?

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Read the above-mentioned tips to learn how to shade your drawing.

If you liked this article, check out our post on How To Start To Draw?