Shading can be tricky! Sometimes our shadows can feel a little flat or strange and we don't
know why. But don't worry, there are a lot of little things you can add to your shadows to
really make them stand out. For this stream, I was illustrating characters for cards but this time
I wanted to draw the character with more luminosity and depth, since most of the time
I optimize my drawing style to be quick for streams. These are the livestream
highlights where I talked a little bit about some advanced shading techniques that can really bring
your characters to life. Like subsurface scattering, body blushing, and bounce light --
all done in MediBang Paint Pro! If you'd like to see the livestream in its entirety, it's
still available on our channel to watch in full, link in the description. But if you'd
like to catch one of them live so you can ask me questions and interact with other viewers,
be sure to subscribe and hit that notification bell so you'll know when to catch us live!
So, "SSS" stands for subsurface scattering and if you don't know what that is, subsurface
scattering is if you hold your hand up to a light, if you hold your hand up to a
light, hold it next to a lamp, you should be able to see there's redness coming from
around your fingers, right? That's subsurface scattering, and that's what makes your shadows
look a lot nicer! Your subsurface scattering is kind of adding that redness back in to
your shadows. And again, I usually like working with a square brush, so
it's kind of messing around with me right now.
Oh, that looks better. Kind of adding this extra red shadow to the edges of your -- kind of red thing -- to
the edges of your shadows make things look a little bit nicer. I always find blend is smooth...
Yeah, kind of adding that little bit of extra red, you zoom out it looks a little bit nicer,
right? It feels a little more like human skin. Right, so I usually have one layer for this
subsurface scattering, I usually have one layer for extra bounce light, and then I have one layer
for light or highlights and body blushing, which I clip directly back onto my colour layer. This is why
I have one layer where I clip extra shadows onto, and then I have one layer where I clip on extra --
like I have two color layers, right? So I can clip two separate things instead of just the one.
And all I'm really doing is just hitting alt back and forth.
Alt is the shortcut for your eyedropper, so if I just kind of click the eyedropper back and forth...
So if you've ever wondered how some artworks look just a little bit more like they're
slightly more lifelike, this is why. Because they're probably using something kind of like
subsurface scattering. Your subsurface scattering should be super, super noticeable on your ears,
because your ears are very, very thin. The areas where it technically has the most
subsurface scattering are your nose, your ears, and the tip of your chin, and
your fingers -- the tips of your fingers. I also like to add a little bit of bounce light with this one
as well, so it's just some extra colour that gives your shadows a little bit more dimension, I think.
This is a little bit of bounce light, so when you're working with your bounce light, again, don't
add a crazy amount. Some people will add another layer, usually I would too, but I'm like too lazy right now...
But don't add in a crazy amount, just enough so it feels like it has a little bit more dimension.
All right so if I turn this off, you can see the difference in how the shadows look.
This just gives it a smidge more energy, I think.
Wings are fun because the feathers are actually translucent, so you can kind of
mess around with how you want the light to pass through them.
All right, so if you think of wings, it's basically like
a hunk of flesh and then there's feathers attached to it.
So it will kind of pass through the same way that skin might.
Okay, so here's the reason why I have multiple layers for different things, right, the reason
why I kept my colour layer completely separate from my shadow layers -- let me just
create some new layers -- so this is my body blushing layer. So this is me adding on even more kind of
like dimension to what I'm illustrating here. So just me adding extra shadows and blush to the
face. Body blushing is a doll artist technique, generally what you would do is you would
blush certain areas of the body to make it feel a little bit more alive. So that
goes across the face, goes on the fingertips, goes in the elbows, the shoulders. Adding some body
blushing gives your character just a little bit of extra dimension. So
again, on your joints is where you would normally body blush, so on your fingers, on your shoulders,
your knees, your toes. And I need to add another clipping layer for my highlights.
All right, so just some extra highlights, right -- finding out where
light will hit from the body, so definitely on the top of the nose, maybe a couple on the cheeks...
I'll do a little bit of extra on this as well. I'm just going to work straight on to the
shadow layer for the harp here, this thing, I think it's a lute actually, I don't know what this is.
Because metal and shiny things do need to be blended just to smidge differently, right,
especially with metal, the shadow and the shines and everything like that are a lot more concentrated.
Again with more shiny things, you have a bit more of a concentrated shadow so not necessarily like,
you don't really have to blend it in quite a crazy amount because metal shadows are
very, very, you know, harsh. How blended in you make it is how much it will scatter the light,
and metal doesn't do that quite as much. Now what I'm going to do take my line work layer,
protect alpha, and now I'm going to colour in some of my lines. Now, colouring in lines just
again adds a little bit more dimension to the piece as a whole. All right so
your line work feels a little bit less flat, also concentrating into some areas
where there is more light hitting it. Again, still understanding where my light source is coming from.
So we have our full angel here, that's kind of like the last step of what I would normally do,
but not quite. So what I would do -- close this whole folder.
Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, because you can't add clipping masks onto folders here. So now I have a full merged
angel here. I'm just going to name this "merge" real quick, and create another clipping mask over here.
To do the final step, which is to add kind of a fade with my limbs into the background.
So now we have the full angel here -- let's put this all into a folder once more.
I'm just going to name this something else instead of just "folder 12". "Img" stands for image, I'll drag them in
and close it. Right, so now I have everything in one big layer, easier to distinguish.
Now I'm going to create another folder underneath here, name it "bkg" short for background.
Let's create a new layer in here, "f" for flat. So again, I don't want to take away too much
attention from the main angel figure here, so I'm just going to do a nice and simple blue background.
I'm going to lock this real quick, protect alpha. I'm going to use a gradient -- I hate using gradients,
but just for this once. I usually always say "don't use a gradient", but I will do it this time.
Right it's a nice kind of blue that fades into the pink, right, nothing too, too crazy. This was a
card illustration done for Valentine's Day, so if you want to watch this drawing in real time
and see how I drew the background, check out our livestream replay linked in the description below.
I hope these tips can help you the next time you shade a character!
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