Pencil Shading

[Learning2Draw]

:overhere:

Could someone give me some suggestions on shading while pencil sketching? I feel like when I'm shading, I end up making a big smudgy mess everywhere and my shadows never look right. What are some tips/techniques/suggestions that any of you might have that could help me?

Thanks

[Lordmaul30]

:overhere:

Could someone give me some suggestions on shading while pencil sketching? I feel like when I'm shading, I end up making a big smudgy mess everywhere and my shadows never look right. What are some tips/techniques/suggestions that any of you might have that could help me?

Thanks

it depends. are you looking to draw 3 dimensional? nothing wrong with being smudgy. do u have a sample art page with where u feel you are "messing up"?

[Learning2Draw]

Yes...a link to some of my sketches...right now I've just been working on faces.

http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=96931

This one has of a group of buildings included...did a little shading, but I was mimicing a lesson I was following along.

http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=97058

What do you suggest for the faces?

[Dizon]

What you should study are the planes of the face in order to know where the light and shadow should be.

[Seedling]

Draw with a hard pencil. Use a scrap of paper to keep your hand from touching the drawing.

[Farvus]

Yes. It's not matter of what pencil strokes you make but rather where ends plane in light and starts plane in shadow To have that knowledge you have to study facial structure. What are the planes, which parts whoud have soft edge shadow, which would cast hard edge shadow, how glossy is skin and so on.

[Fine-touch]

Well I use a tool called the stub (it looks a pencil but made up of cardboard paper) you can find it at the art store, it is cheap. But I do agree with patdzon: you have to figure out were your light is coming from so you would know you shading parts and depths. I do not have an example but I can scan one and attach it to show you what I mean.

[dose]

what others said about planes & understanding *why* to put tone where.

But as for how I'd also recommend spending some time investigating how pencil (or whatever medium you happen to be using) physically goes onto the paper (or canvas or whatever). It's something that we take for granted, but few people I know- even a lot of artists- really understand in detail what happens when you drag a pencil across paper. You need to understand it intellectually and experientially- meaning it's not just enough for me to tell you- you need to get a bunch of pencils and drag them around on different types of paper for hours. Try to understand how the following variables interact & what physically happens between them:

- different grades of pencil hardness
- sharpness/dullness of pencil
- pressure of pencil on paper
- angle of pencil to the paper (you may need to play with how you hold the pencil)
- paper grain (smooth to grainy)
- paper softness/hardness/thickness
- different types of erasers (kneaded, rubber, plastic)
- smearing using different materials (cloth, paper towels/napkins, stumps, etc)

You can check them out both as separate explorations and by just paying close attention while you're working on a drawing or sketch.