Tutorial: 002 Basic Shading

Ancient people used charcoal to draw on cave wall and left behind an expression lasting for thousands of years. Then some smart guy refined charcoal into graphite, wrapped it with wood for cleaner handling, thus pencil was born. This marvelous invention survived until today because it is the simplest writing tool, cheapest, and even erasable.

Pencil has one big advantage over pen, it can do shade. Isn’t that exciting! Maybe not yet. Well, like I said in the first tutorial, the harder you press the darker you get, and that will be our source of excitement.

Pen, on the other hand, do not behave like pencil, but still, you can get shades by varying spaces between line. The closer the line together the darker you get.

Ok, let’s put both of these medium into practice. Sketch this ball.

I did this in few minutes and a look bit rough. Try it, just to get familiar with the pressure and result it produce.

Now, try with pen. Vary your line spacing to get different shades.

Also try to mix your stroke with different direction to get denser shades.

This tutorial is in co-operation with Denaihati.com

See that? Same subject presented in three different mediums. Just look deeply at each one, you can feel the variation of environment and mode. Feel excited about learning how to draw now? Hope you do. Now you know that different medium produces different mode.

Here is another example of linework drawing. Looks familiar?

OK, let’s wrap our class for now, but I really hope my tutorial do trigger your creative side of mind. Don’t worry, I am not very much into terms and jargon or tools used in formal drawing/painting class. Just do it with whatever material available around you. That way it will be more fun.

Here is one of my sketches done back in 07 using pencil.

And here is where the above eyes originated from. Have a nice creative day!

Please leave your comment if you have any question about this shading tutorial. Thank you!