Pencil shading question

so i started to try my hand at some pencil shading. i just have a quick question.
when you shade do you put down a base colour or do you just try to merge darker shades with lighter shades by joining them with medium shades.
i really haven't tried pencils before so any tips and tricks would also be great *looks at charlie*
MERRY CHRISTMAS#
tyvm in advance deatgs

Great you started on pencils
Do the lineart, choose a lightsource, then fill in the shadows

I like to do like this:
http://mathiastemplar.deviantart.com...lvie-116552231
http://mathiastemplar.deviantart.com...rman-120109482
usually you start with the lighter shades, and work your way to dark shades^^

*Rest of gallery at http://mathiastemplar.deviantart.com/gallery/

There are 3 ways to shade I can think of atm. (Note that I'm no pro at shading so please correct me if I'm wrong. But this is how I do it).

The first way is mathias' way. Hatch the parts where shadows need to be. At places where lighter shadows are the hatches are far away from eachother, at darker shadows the hatches get closer. Another option is making single hatches at lighter parts and crossed hatched at darker parts.

This isn't a very precise way and you get a bit of scetche comic style. If you want a bit more detailed and real looking the other 2 options are better. What I mostly do (cause I'm too lazy for the third :P) is have a soft B pencil and go shade ^^. You keep the pencil in your hand without pressing it on the paper. Only the weight of the pencil is coming in (GO G-FORCE!!). Then you very softly start shading, you keep doing is till you got a smooth slightly grey surface (doesn't have to be super smooth where the darker shadows come, just the lighter parts need to be) Then you go pick up that pencil again and press a little so you get darker colour, you just don't shade the last part of the shadow. You continue doing this by moving up a bit by bit, and pressing harder and harder on the pencil. This way you should get a nice smooth surface from light to darker.

BUT... this isn't perfect either. Pencils leave imperfectness with slightly darkerr lines that stand out. So thats where way 3 helps us out. You use the same procedure as way 2. But now you get a box of tissues (make sure your mother is in the room, otherwise you might get challenged to do some private stuff ) and go blend those shadows. By going over them with the tissue you make them more blurry and more smooth. Don't go wipe the tissue in the wrong direction cause when you wipe from dark to lighter you will make the light parts darker and that forces you to expand your shadows which mide be unrealistic. You keep blending untill your surface gets smoother, and keep adding pencil where nececary. Don't expect to get this perfect the first time, you will get some pencil along your immage from your hand and stuff, just try to errase it. Practice makes art. Also instead of tissue you can use one of those grey errasers which you can knead (don't know the word for that :P)

Hope I helped you out. Maybe some people can complete me, or correct me when I'm wrong. Good luck, will take some practice.

If you wonder what marterial to use, try some deviant art works, some tell what stuff they used. Graphite is one of the more popular ones.
Some links for you
My most favorite traditional artist : http://shimoda7.deviantart.com/
http://genni.deviantart.com/art/Hold...ether-12217672
http://shimoda7.deviantart.com/art/P...y-own-33234157

Don't let these things scare you but inspire you! Some you see on deviant could be edited afterwards like blended on the computer or whatever. Also in real on paper they look different. So don't expect to get exactly the same.

hwy guys cheers for the great info. i deccided to do some shading so that i get a feel for where the shadows go before i paint. i appreciate all the help. its great advice and ill show u what i come up with

Good luck with it! Keep us up to date! Maybe its nice to show some progress too instead of only a finished piece.

If I my give one more tip. Start shading shapes instead of people first, for example a high hat or a round shape. People are good to shade too but alot harder. Cause besides the the colour of the shade to need to think about the shape of the shade aswell. I think the perfect exampe shows how the shades work. Look at her arm. Not only shows it the shade, it also expresses the shape of the arm, where curves are, that its 3D and not 2D etc.
Small practices first before you start colouring will improve you quickly just get a bit the feeling of shading

Again, good luck!

sweet for the advice i was just wondering do i need special paper.
sorry for being a newb but i only do water colours and inks this is a new experience.

also should i leave some areas white to symbolize totaly brightness?
ill post an update in a couple of hours

You make things bright by having no colour in there. If you want to make something shiny you need to darken it around. You can leave it empty, but easier, and oftenly better looking imo, is using an eraser afterwards to highlight spots.

About the paper.. I use normal paper because I don't make serious artworks to show off or something. Specially in the beginning I wouldnt waste money on special paper as it's alot more expecive. But if you get better and want to give it a real go to your personal masterpiece I would suggest a littlebit brownish paper with more relief. That could look better. Also depends on the origin of the art work. For example on the commission for reyla the artist used a coloured background. It gives a smoothers and nicer effect because of the smaller contrast.

yeha sweet the whole point of doing this was a) to improve and b) creat a portfolio using various techniques to show YSj and hopefully get a commision.



i know its not too much like her but im doing the contorted battle rage scene the hair need more work any idead on how to give hair more volume?
(im not talking about Vo% volume here either

Looks quite good! I would give you one tip to start with, one I tend to forget about all the time myself :P Don't be afraid to make things very dark. I like to draw with inkpen, and there I found out how important black was.

Here I was still too shy to use black :P


Here I did use more black:


As you can see the last image looks more present and there is more drama in it. Giving more shadows makes it look more real and adds more life to it. I would recommend you do that too. Shadows most of the time go from light to darker but not smooth. There is a smooth transition between light and dark, but not that it goes from light to dark all along the way, a shadow mostly jumps in very quickly. I find it hard to explain I hope you understand. I tried to make a picture to it on the computer but didnt work out that well :P
<--not that but more like that -->


I don't think your hair needs more volume exept that it needs to be bigger. You need to expand the hair a bit above the head. I really like how you make the hair shadows, great job on that! Jealous :O

I start giving you maybe useless tips now as you are still in progression.. but her arm holding her sword needs alot of shadow. Light is coming from the left up so her arm is mostly covered in shadow. At her junction there is probably no light, so should be completely black.

Hope I helped Good work, keep the mood up

right got u, not to sound again like a noob but when u talk about the junction do u mena where the lower arm meets the upper arm. ty for the advice on the dark black what type of pencil do u suggest thank you for the amazing advice so far

Junctions are places all over the body where bodyparts meet eachother and are able to angle. So yes it's where the lower arm meets the upper arm. In your fingers you got alot of junctions too etc. About the pencil.. I would suggest a dark pencil with hard pencils (H) it is hard to do as you will torn the paper. So I would pick a quite soft pencil about 4B or something doesn't really matter that much.
You could also use a colour pencil. The negative side of it is, that its not a drawing pencil but a colouring pencil. A drawing pencil is grey, a colouring pencil has a colour, in this case black, and then I really mean black. So the sad thing is they don't work well together. If I draw chibi's by hand I use a black colour pencil. They are alot darker and give you more drama. But for bigger pieces like you do I still would suggest a drawing pencil. Its hard to draw light shadows/lines with a black color pencil. They work great for drawing some form of lineart. You could experiment with them sometime though

Glad I can help. And when you draw like that, you don't sound like a noob, dont worry

thank you very much for that and also the hair thing thanks for that its a technique from all my manga drawing days where u use the rubbers to rub out the darkest section of a strand and then the lighters section merges well with the rubber but it has to be dark to start with.

Ill try the pencil line art you suggested, its quite interesting trying to make the shades mix well unlike inks where they just used to roll together.
ill give you another update, really appreciate your help man

Back in my drawing days, I used to practice shadows and gradients with coloring books. They're pre-drawn so you just get to pick your light source and whip out a couple in a row. I have stacks of filled up coloring books with just pencil and coloring in them. The best part is that they're pretty cheap and you don't risk losing your intricately drawn line-art or a drawing you particularly like if you mess up.