tips for shading

[asidman2001]

I am a fairly good artist but I can never figure out how to shade right how do you guys do it

[Evil]

Well, what kind of shading? Pencil? Pen? Marker? Mouse? Tablet? What?

This board is for critics. Please post us some of your shading attempts so we can help.

[asidman2001]

shading charcters in paint just to make them look not flat

[Scummbuddy]

distinguish your light point reference, and working with similar perspective lines, create the shadow. just look at real life and see how shadows are casted. (google images if you dont have real life  )

just check out bgs and chars of games that inspire you, or that you want to emulate.

[Gilbert]

If you don't show your works we can't really provide much help, as we don't know what style your drawings are and what your are aiming for. Especially when this is the Critics forum which you should really post something here for suggestions and such.

[asidman2001]

I dont post pictures because i'm afraid someone will steal my ideas

[Scummbuddy]

but you want to steal other peoples shading ideas?

[Gilbert]

Maybe I'll steal them, as I'm curious about the "fairly good artist" part.

Anyway, if you don't post some work here, this thread does not belong to this board I think.

[Scummbuddy]

well, i did move it from the beginners ags editor tech forum. i felt it would better apply here, but perhaps not.

[stuh505]

If you want to draw cartoons, draw all outlines and no shadows.  If you want to draw real life, draw all shadows and no outlines.  And you can make more realistic looking cartoons by adding more and more shading, but as long as you have outlines they will still be cartoons.

How do you shade?  You put darkness where there is darkness, and whiteness where there is more light hitting (duh?)

How do you know what's dark and light?  You either look at an example or use your advanced biological raytracer (that's your brain) to guess.  Don't forget to turn on radiosity.

If you're doing a sketch in omnicolor charcoal, pencil, or ink...then you just have a threshold, and paint what's darker thn that threshold solid black and what's lighter leave solid white...of course you can get more advanced and use some kind of hash marks to go inbetween if you like.

If you're using oil paints, put down your darkest darks first...then your medium colors...and then paint your highlights on top.

If you're using watercolor, paint down your darkest darks leaving white spaces for your highlights, and then your mediums on top, also leaving emptiness for your highlights.  Be sure not to have your paper wet when you are applying these layers because you can't have bleeding around the negative areas of highlights.

On a computer you can do whatever you want.

[Andail]

As someone pointed out, this forum is for displaying your creations and recieving c&c on them.

Also:

I dont post pictures because i'm afraid someone will steal my ideas

But everybody else is showing their pictures. Why would you need special treatment?