Shading help?

[Chu]

I simply cannot learn how to shade properly. Does anyone know any good tutorials for Serif? For a referance I'm trying to shade this picture.

[kyu]

ahh, first you must determine your light source, chu! decide where is the light coming from, and how strong it is.
shading is all a matter of lights and darks and shapes. so basically what you want to do is analyze your shape and where the lights hit it, try to find the lightest point of this shape and then try to find the place where very little or no light hits it. this is how you create shading.
it is very difficult to explain! but looking at references at at things from life should help you. the thing to remember is do not look at what color something is supposed to be, but rather what it actually is, for example, skin in shadow has a tendency to be more purple than your general flesh tone, as a matter of fact most shadows are cool colors, generally more purple but sometimes blue or green. highlights can also be very light blues greens or purples, i would avoid a yellow highlight however because in general yellow will actually make it appear darker. i generally use purple for shadows and very light cyan for highlights, blended into my base color of course.
another important thing to remember is to use contrasts! lots of them. make your darks dark and lights light, a general mistake made by young artists is that they will do very delicate shading, so that you almost cannot see it, this is not the way things work in our world unless the entire thing you are shading is completely surrounded by light.
also try not to shade with just the same hue again, cools for darks, and also to add life into faces and skin you should use reds and oranges into skin, it creates nice contrasts.
again there is not really a good tutorial for shading, but if you study from life or photographs or professional artwork in the style you want, eventually it will just click for you! I wish you good luck

[Chu]

Thanks for the tips, Kyu! It sounds to me though that shading would be easier for painting than CG art. D;

[Smite]

It does apply to CGing it just is far to advanced for your lvl since you pretty much dont know the basics.

My advice would be to look at others art and study where they put there shadows. As well as Always keeping in mind where your light is coming from.

[kyu]

no, it is actually the exact same for cg or for traditional art!! much easier to do in cg in fact, because mixing colors for painting is very hard because you are working with pigments and not lights, so you will get muddy colors, when you want your shadows to be saturated colors, its a lot easier to make saturated colors for your shadows when working with light (cg) because you have 17 million hues whereas pigments you only have /maybe/ 250.

smite, i.. i thought that was the basics.

also dont ever shade with black and white, dont remember if i said it, but dont do it, it will make the colors muddy and lifeless!
and practice makes perfect

[Chu]

Okay... I think I understand a bit. In your opinions, how should I go about shading that picture? The main point of light is coming from the top left-hand corner; a bit soft.

I'd just like to know, where should I start? What type of shades should I use, and how much? Ect.


I just realize that I didn't put the one up with EDITED hair. XD

[kalima]

i could make you a tutorial but it might take me a bit since i am moving

[Chu]

Don't go through that trouble for me. ^^; I can look up tutorials and such.

[Transcendence]

I just wanted to make a quick comment and say that I love how your art has come out so far even if you havent shaded it yet.