Shading & Drawing Techniques

Video Transcript

"Joel Hickerson, grindog.com. Today we're going to explore some shading and drawing techniques. First, let's start with our drawing. Alright... we can actually start with the pen we use to draw it with. One technique for shading, when you're using a hard line such as this, would be just solid. Fill in the dark areas, solid, and you give... you can actually give weight to the things on the undersides of your drawing just by thickening the line. You see here, that makes... gives your drawing a little bit of gravity, and kind of weighs it down. Okay... and that's with an ink... hard line ink drawing. You can also come in, another way to do it, is with a neutral color colored pencil, especially in a black and white drawing. You do the same technique as with a ink, where you just do lines on the shadow side, or you can even do a little cross-hatching. Or, you can turn your pencil on its side, and get a much more subtle sort of feel, using the edge just when you feel it's necessary. That's a little more subtle of a technique... and I forgot an eyebrow over here. Alright... or, and we'll just kind of touch on this for now, is with colors, where you start with a colored pencil, for instance, where you get skin color in place. You notice where the light's hitting the face, I have left out color completely, and the dark, I go ahead and I use the lighter colored pencil, but then I'll come back with a darker shade of that same color, and kind of fill in the shadowy areas, almost blending the pencil. And anywhere the shadow falls, I'll put the colored pencil in place... the darker colored pencil. Okay... and that's pretty much a good explanation into shading and drawing techniques."