Shading!

Shading is kinda diffucult to me, those fancy software things like painter classic I just dont understand and B&W ink shading I tend to go over board I know the basics on folds and skin tone but find it very diffucult and very long to do that, any advice on techniques anyone uses?

I am not really sure that I understand your question , but I will try , okay?

Really the main thing to do when you are shading , is to consider where your source(s) of light are coming from , and what that light is like .

For example , in this picture [ http://www.geocities.com/nosrepon/engineer.jpg ] , since there are ~3 sources of light , there are three different shadings (well , shadings in two cases , lightening in the other ). And the amount of shading you do really depends on what angle the light is according to your reference point !

I have this feeling that the answer I gave is not to the question that you asked . If this is true , please post more detail on what you mean. and sorry !

~Syn

ERR ya sorry

I meant that like what shapes of the shade to do at certain angles, such as straight lines or height. Say for example you know where the light is coming from, then what? Basicly how to draw the shades so it looks realistic all around the character. My problem is that I shade to much or shade to little making it look like light is streaming all around the character. SO I tend to opt at no shading at all which in some way or another deafeats the effect of the drawing. Shading is a great deal confusing. Established artists have their own methods of stroking or where to use dark shades to lighter shades at exactly when to when, to make the overall picture more pleasing to the realistic eyeball. So if anyone can share their techniques with what they do when facing shading that would be really cool
-snerk

Well , I will give it another shot ! Hopefully I will be more helpful this time.

Really , it depends on the shape of the object in question. What you will want to visualise is the light interacting with the object. When the light hits something, it will then bounce away (for the most part). What you are probably going to want to look out for is, "Where is a place that the light won't get to?"

For example, let's say that you have a person's shoulder. The light source is behind them, maybe around head level, like a lamp or a low setting sun. Now let's take the whole scene and rotate it so that you are looking straight at the shoulder (like a profile view of a person). So , the light source is off to one side. The light coming in toward the person's back will hit it and bounce off, so you will either use no shading, or perhaps a little bit of highlighting. On the other hand, once you go over the crest of the shoulder and start going down the arm/chest, the light isn't going to be able to reach that because their arm/shoulder/back is in the way ! So you would shade that region. You can either use the cel-style in which you basically only have one level of shading, or the realistic style that is totally dynamic; the further you get from the edge of the light (ie, going from the top of the shoulder down to the chest), the darker it gets. I recently have used a combination of the two.

As for the shape, it also depends on the object. A rounded object would likely have a shadow that follows the rounded edge. So if you have, say, a leg ... since a leg is rounded, your shading line would also be rounded. This shows the "depth" of the leg, and lets the viewer KNOW that it is rounded; if it just goes straight, sometimes it can make the leg look blocky.

Ahh! I don't know if that helped anyway. Someone else give it a go!

~Syn

RIght

Ill try the height porportional lights on my artwork from now on.
-Thanks a billion errr trillion err alot yes yes ALOT!
-snerk