Kreekakon's Artist Training Grounds (2012/9/15 Chapter 3 - Shading Phase 1)

[Kreekakon]

Chapter 3 - Shading Phase 1: Dark Areas

NOTE: I have now moved back to my university dorm, and am therefore away from my scanner. The pictures in this chapter, and perhaps the ones to come will be taken with my cellphone. Apologies for any quality loss.

After you have a outline you are satisfied with after our last chapter, it is time to go into the first phase of shading, which is applying shading to the darkest areas of the picture.

Consult your reference picture to decide where the shading will go. When applying shading of this darkness level, I'd recommend you use a very dark pencil, preferably 6B, or above.

There's not really too much of a deep technique when it comes to applying this sort of shading. You see a very dark place? Fill it in with your pencil. There's no wrong way to do this as long as you make the area dark, and filled in the end. More delicate methods of shading will be discussed in the next chapter.

TIP: A problem can sometimes arise that you are unsure whether an area can be considered dark enough, or not. True, the ability to flawlessly make decisions like this will require experience.

Here is however a quick way to determine if an area should be filled, or not: If you are unsure if an area is dark, not then there's a high probability that it isn't, and does not need to be filled. Really dark areas should be fairly obvious.

The picture below demonstrates this idea:




After some quick work with the picture, the Brute drawing now looks like this. Don't be worried if the dark areas aren't exactly like mine. It is common for different decisions to be made about this.

Spoiler below!

Full Size: http://i.imgur.com/P7eZc.jpg?1

This will conclude phase 1 of shading, and we will move on to phase 2 in the next chapter. As always, feel free to voice your thoughts on how this chapter was, and if you have any questions feel free to ask!

~End of Chapter 3


Next chapter: Shading Phase 2: General Shading

PS: The next chapter will be the most complicated one out of all the chapters, and therfore may take a while before I can set up the tutorial properly.