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Quick and Easy Shading Tutorial
#shading #tutorial
Published: 2016-02-28 06:50:32 +0000 UTC; Views: 11801; Favourites: 510; Downloads: 66
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Description
A lot of people have expressed how much they like my shading. In all honesty I use a pretty simple way to shade that generally takes me just a few minutes to do. It's not as fancy as proper shading would be by any means, but it creates depth nicely so it works well. I call it lazy shading, but for the sake of this tutorial let's go with Quick & Easy shading, because it is both.The tutorial is based off of Photoshop CS6, though most other digital programs should have the same options used here available, they may just be located in other places than shown in this tutorial.
I also took the liberty or reusing the lines for this piece for the sake of this tutorial
If anyone has any questions or problems please feel free to leave them in a comment below and I'll do what I can to help you out.
Happy shading!
Edit:
Oh hey, a DD! Many thanks to RogueMudblood and Kida-neechan for suggesting and CelticStrm-Stock for featuring!
So just to be clear, this shading technique is in no way, shape, form, or fashion a proper way of shading. It merely is a simple and quick way to add depth and definition to your piece. This technique will not give you the range of color needed to really bring your art to life. You can easily build upon this shading technique in order to achieve the proper colors however by adding a new layer(s) and giving proper colors a place in your piece.
That being said, if you're just looking for something quick to add definition to your piece and you're not concerned with life like shading, this technique will likely be your best friend.
Going to plug some of my actual art here too:
Related content
Comments: 131
I might not use Photoshop though. But I got it how it works ... at least for me haha ^^
Really an easy but effective tutorial you made. Congrats for your DD!
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I'm glad to hear that!
Thank you
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I scrolled down the page quickly, and vaguely saw this and knew it was yours from the style aha, congrats!
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haha, thanks hon, I'm glad to know my style is recognizable enough for that!
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Nice explanation of basic shading work. Congrats on the DD!
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Standin' on the front stoop hangin' out the window
Watchin' all the cars go by, roarin' as the breezes blow
Crazy lady, livin' in a bag
Eatin' outta garbage pails, used to be a fag hag
Said she'll dance the tango, skip the light fandango
A Zircon princess seemed to lost her senses
Down at the peep show watchin' all the creeps
So she can tell her stories to the girls back home
She went to the city and got social security
She had to get a pimp, she couldn't make it on her own
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Congratulations on the well-deserved daily deviation, dear~ at long last
Have a fabulous day~ ☆
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haha, thanks for suggesting hon
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RogueMudBlood suggested it too, I sent mine to a different CV 
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OMG this is what I get for trying to read things while I'm still half asleep. I saw you add it to your suggested Deviations collection and I guess assumed that you were listed as the suggester
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eeeek, no shadow is ever just black black my dear
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id definitely suggest using more atmospheric colors for shading and highlighting, since straight up black, white and grey for these kinds of things tends to lead to the work looking very flat and uncanny from my experience!
from what i know, typical shading colors tend to be in the blue/purple ranges and highlights depend on other colors in the overall work :0
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With this method it really depends on what colors are underneath it, and even then using saturated tones doesn't usually give a very good effect.
This is by no means a way to properly shade a piece, but it's a good easy way to get some definition and shape to a piece.
This piece uses this same method of shading using only greys. As you can see, it's still incredibly saturated even though I dropped the opacity of the shading layer to desaturate it some.
In this piece you can see how it gets far more saturated as the colors below have more saturation as well
The biggest problem with this method is that it simply emphasizes the base colors rather than adding new colors to the piece like you'd see naturally. It's still a great way to add depth, and if one wanted to give more realistic shading to the piece, they could layer on top of this and add additional colors to bring it to life.
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that may be where the sort of uncanny look comes from now that you mention it, since its not really much of shading with environment in mind so much as just saturation of the base tones :0
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Exactly. If someone wants to keep the environment in mind, they will need to add extra color on a new layer above it at the very least.
But the whole point of the tutorial was never to teach how to do any extensive shading, because this technique just wont cut it for that
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Im so lazy I just do straight up black, lower the layers opacity, then do white highlights right on top of that omg I cannot believe there is actually a science to this I HAVE BEEN BLIND
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Avoiding straight black or straight white will be your friend for sure.
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Typically I just use dodge and burn directly on my base layer. Probably not the proper use of those, but it's worked so far.
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I've seen some people who use Dodge and Burn effectively, thought I've also seen a lot of people who just don't ... they just don't! lol.
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I'm pretty much happy with mine, but I don't know which category I fall into! LOL!
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This is actually extremely helpful and an entirely different way to shade then I've been using. This looks a lot easier than my method too. Thank you so much!
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This way works really well in most cases. With some colors you may need to tweek the shades you're using on the shading layer or even just lower the opacity of the layer all together, but otherwise it's great. If you want to add more depth and more 'pop' to your image using this method and then adding a layer on top to add more definition and colors for shading works really well too.
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Oh my gosh thanks for the extra tips!!!
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this is really helpful, thanks for the tutorial!
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Thanks for sharing! I love horses.
If you have any tutorials/ tips on drawing them, I'd love to see it!
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I made this a while back
and I also wrote this article which might be helpful
PE: Tools for drawing HorsesArtist's Toolbox Week
Hello everyone,
today I'll be discussing the art of drawing horses and what tools can be quite useful for this task.
I think it's fair to say that those who do not regularly draw horses find them daunting to draw and often make remarks about horses being one of the most difficult subjects to draw.
For those of us who draw them often this is a silly notion, but there is no doubt that we also once struggled with different parts of horse anatomy.
In theory drawing horses is just like drawing anything else - find and define shapes, map out your sketch, refine etc. until you have a drawing you can be proud of.
The reality however is that horse anatomy tends to have strange angles and small quirks that you generally wont notice without looking more closely. Did you know that horse pupils are actually oval and not round?
Okay, so I think we all understand that drawing horses is not as easy as it appears they might be, so let's take some time and discuss different tools t
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Huh.
Well there's another excuse for me to use my computer more often.
Thanks!
(seriously though, I already rarely use it, so I may as well give this a go.)
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