[Music] a lot of my digital art students ask me how do I shade things realistically so we made
this tutorial to show my process of digital painting I'm going to be painting an apple
a classic still life object but first I'll show you how to shade and blend a sphere using only
grayscale to focus on value painting in fall color can be difficult so going back to the basics in
black and white will allow you to focus on just the value which is ultimately more important for
realistic shading I'll show you my process for shading and blending and at the end I'll share my
best tip on how to do it quickly without spending hours nitpicking the details first of all we're
going to be doing a sphere together starting on a gray background kind of helps determine your
values just drawing a circle it doesn't need to be perfect leave yourself some room for a cast
shadow so we're going to be saying that our light source is going to be coming from the top right
the light source is important the light source is going to tell us what direction or shadow is
going to be going in and it's going to tell us what area is going to be lightest on our sphere
so based on our light source our lightest area is going to be kind of around this spot our shadow is
going to be coming down around here because we're digital artists it'll help if we actually mark
it down first with different rings so if we have our first ring here this is is kind of just where
generally where our lightest area will be it'll slowly get darker but there's going to be a ring
of the darkest values right here this shadow is going to be the darkest ring on the entire space
where the shadow gets the darkest so it's actually going to be a little bit lighter down here based
on the bounce light of our ground it'll be good for you to kind of mark these down to start off
just in case if like you know never really done it before you don't really know where everything
is it'll help for you to kind of get a sense of what your shadows are where they go so at the very
basics right if our light source is up here this is where our light is going to be hitting you're
gonna have a cast shadow down here we're gonna have our darkest shadow right here which will not
necessarily be black by the way it might be but not necessarily and then our lightest area here
which also might not necessarily be white because we're digital artists the easiest way you can go
about this is with our light source you're gonna pick your lightest value first kind of just color
that in find your darkest value here put that on our Terminator line you can pick your second
darkest put it down underneath here and then get your third darkest put it right here we're gonna
worry about our cast shadow later we're just going to be worrying about the actual sphere first once
we've got that down this is why it's nice and easy for us digitals because once we lay this
down it becomes very easy to just blend back and forth there are different ways to blend digitally
but I have a very traditional method of blending which is to constantly go back and forth between
values and hues using the eyedropper tool until the blending is more gradual and natural looking
I do like to keep my brush strokes visible but this is a personal and stylistic preference I'll
link a more in-depth blending tutorial where I go over the different types of digital blending so
you can watch that next and all we want to do is we want to make sure that the transition between
all of these shadows that we've just put down is smooth enough the fun thing about digital is
that you don't necessarily have to make it more contemporary I guess it's the best way that you
can put it and what that means is that we don't necessarily need to follow by more traditional
rules so what we can do is like smooth shadows not necessarily what's needed we can leave in
brush strokes we can leave in texture we can leave in all that fun jazz right and I personally really
like it when you can see my brush strokes in my shadows or my blending but the number number one
thing when we're working with painting our forms that's like an absolute is that if we're painting
a form you need to make sure that your shadows are matching the curve of whatever form you're
drawing right so if we're doing the sphere we need to make sure that our shadows match the
curve of the sphere you're not going to see like a straight edge like this while I'm shading in the
sphere you're noticing that I'm constantly curving around it as if it is like you know like think of
it like a ball right that's a sphere so yours have curves and we want to make sure that we have those
curves in our paintings all right so once we have those values down just kind of roughly painted in
right so once you've kind of blended in all your shadows notice that you can still see kind of the
initial rings that I put down there you still got your general you know light source right there you
see the area right here it's the darkest portion of the shadow and it slightly gets lighter as you
get back to here because of the bounce light that comes directly off of our score there's always
things that affect your shadows just constantly around right you're gonna have to think about
what you work it's the same deal with our cast shadow we want to have it darkest when it's right
up against the sphere and then it'll get lighter as it goes outwards and as it gets farther as well
it'll start to get a little bit more dispersed so it'll be nice and sharp when it's near our sphere
and then as it gets farther away the shadow will become more dispersed you can see this effect you
have a flashlight or something depending on how close or far away your hand gets from in
front of the light source and the flashlight the shadow will either disperse or be nice and sharp
so this is all we want to think about with our sphere so we just kind of want to think
of where our light source is remember that there's a Terminator such a core and there's
going to be bounce light that comes off of the ground right there's gonna be a cast
shadow as well depending on the direction of the light source the light source is up here
the sphere is going to block the light in a certain pattern depending on the shape of our
object so now we're gonna move on to the still life keep in mind the things that you're going
to want to look for based on that you can identify it on your reference that you have
you have so on this one there's actually multiple light sources so this is an area light we have it
around here so there's actually light coming from all directions but I'm going to say that
the lights mostly be coming from up here so we have some Terminator shadows down here and you
can see the edge of it which shows us the divot of the apple right the apple is not a perfect sphere
and you can see the lights being hit on this apple immediately they're nice and they're reflections
right because the apple is shiny so our light source is going to be a lot more concentrated
by comparison so I'm gonna do first I'm just gonna sketch out the general shape of the apple
so once I have my sketch which didn't take forever some of my students asked me Jessie
can I just use the eyedropper tool to pick the color I will allow you to color pick for you to
get better I don't necessarily recommend it usually it's nice to kind of just figure it
out with your eyes so when you color stuff in you know like if you have your if you've sketched on
the layer above and the color is too light then it'll look weird if you're using a darker color
so change that by changing your layer type with your sketch on it to a multiply layer so there
should be somewhere on the layer window that says like normal but it's like a drop down menu
you click it you should be able to change that layer type to something else multiply should be on
there and then once you change it to multiply then you can color it on the layer below and then it'll
easily blend in you don't necessarily have to do this but it will help if you'd like to support the
channel and the creation of free arts education become a member on Patreon again I'm not looking
for perfect rendering that's the thing is what I'm looking for on this one is mostly just your
understanding of the forums and the understanding of the shapes your understanding of what you can
see when you're looking at it that's the beautiful thing about observational is that you are drawing
what you see not what you think you see if you see something that's on there you will draw it as an
artist you can alleviate some of this detail if you see something that you don't necessarily want
to add in there go for it right that's more up to interpretation and more up to you fun thing
about us being digital artists as well is that adding light and adding Shadows is really nice and
easy because we have layer styles right so what I'm gonna do with this one is I'm going to play
around with a few just to see which one I think is the best one in terms of what I want but again
I'm working off of observations I'm working off of what I see right so I see a giant square of light
here so that's what I'm going to draw I always refer back to your reference one of the techniques
that I was taught was just like you know always look back and forth like two seconds on your art
two seconds on your on your reference right you want to constantly go back and forth and back
when we're doing observational we are drawing exactly what is in front of us so what is there
is what we draw so one thing when I looked at my apple I was looking over here like okay what do
I see I see this ring up on the top here I see this ring of light that goes around and I was
like okay that's what I'm gonna draw so I drew it on this light source is a bit weird it's a square
and it's what I have to draw so I did it there's a little bit of extra bounce light here so I drew it
over there don't expect perfection ever don't expect perfection when you're starting don't
expect perfection as you become a professional it's something you grow into and something that
you get you know a bit more accustomed to I suppose one term that I've gotten so annoyed
by because it's true is the trust the process kind of deal right the more you work on it eventually
it'll look fine you look at it's like there's a stage of your artwork where it looks really really
ugly and you're like man what am I doing and eventually I'm kind of keep working at it
so the technique that I'm doing right now is when you're painting or when you're working with
your digital work sometimes you'll find yourself getting hung up on details really really easily
and you'll end up zooming in and you'll go like man it's like this section does not look good
it's like I can't figure it out this is when you zoom out do not stay zoomed in all the time it
will hurt you this goes for any kind of digital art if you stay zoomed in the whole time you will
be looking from one perspective and it really will harm your work so it's usually better if you fix
that by zooming out I promise it makes everything 20 times easier because you're not worrying about
details as much you're worrying more about the big picture rather than this little picture you'll
notice mistakes as well you'll notice more things that you've done that's wrong this apple is not
the correct size so these shadows that are down here while it is also the cast shadow these are
also in game artists terms or digital artists terms this is called your ambient occlusion and
ambient occlusion is your shadows that are caused by proximity rather than light source so if two
objects are close to one another it's not going to be letting in light and regardless of wherever
your license it's going to be darker than ever so your your ambient occlusion is going to cause
shadows no matter so that's another source of shadow that you need to think about so say if your
arms are kind of like at your sides there's going to be a bit of shadow between your arm and your
body because your close and proximity is going to be a little light that's going to be light in
there or like folds in clothes so what I'm mostly doing right now is fixing kind of the shadows and
the highlights that are on here you know don't be afraid to just add on extra layers fix stuff
again exact not what I'm looking for so like if you just kind of add in certain bits it doesn't
need to look perfect you know I'm definitely not going to be drawing every single little
ridge of that leaf I don't expect you to take if there's leaves like this I don't expect you to add
drawn every single little object like a bit of those leaves one last tip I have for you is to
suggest detail instead of painting it all this will make your piece look a lot more painterly
and less overworked if you stress about all the tiny little details in your piece then it will
end up looking a little bit too overworked so you're better off just suggesting the detail
rather than painstakingly putting it all in there join a virtual class to learn live from
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