Tutorials about Shading/Light for beginners?

  • ⚙️ Performance issue identified and being addressed.
  • Want to keep track of this thread?
    Accounts can bookmark posts, watch threads for updates, and jump back to where you stopped reading.
    Create account
Uzumaki

Uzumaki

Just bein' ahwnist
kiwifarms.net
Joined
Feb 4, 2013
I'm not very good at drawing, but I've doodled enough in my life that I at least have something of a style to work with, and with access to Photoshop I can do a fairly decent job working within my own limitations (at least as far as drawing goofy comics goes).

For the past few years every now and then I get it into my head that I'm going to teach myself how to incorporate shading/highlights/whatever you call it when you deal with light into my quiver of photoshop arrows. Since I'm entirely self "taught" I inevitably turn to photoshop tutorials online.

While I've had really good luck with photoshop tutorials for anything else I may want to do, I've never been able to find anything I can work with in terms of shading and what have you. I can find them, but they always speak way over my head. I have no formal art training so I understand why this is the case, but I'm hoping somewhere out there there's a basic tutorial understandable to the lay person. All the ones I find are like "Step 1) select this tool Step 2) apply these settings Step 3) Shade with it."

So I'm asking if any of the very talented people here know of a good tutorial or website where I might find a tutorial that I'm actually going to be able to work with. Or maybe something that could get me up to speed so that I could understand the more advanced shading tutorials floating around.

I'm really only looking for the most basic basic stuff. I have zero experience making anything resembling shading look good, so I have a lot of work ahead of me to even start with the fundamentals.

Thanks in advance for any help.
 
I notice most Japanese (and by extension Asian) art online all looks the same, and it all centers around intense rendering. They all gotta be learning it from somewhere. Could start there.

E: Failing that, I reckon digital painting has a similar skillset to draw from.
 
Last edited:
Every tutorial I remember is twenty years old and on forums that don't exist any more.

But here's one I found from Pro Comic Artist David Finch. Outside of that, just go on Youtube and search until you find someone with a style that appeals to you.

 
Arthur Morgan said:
Every tutorial I remember is twenty years old and on forums that don't exist any more.

But here's one I found from Pro Comic Artist David Finch. Outside of that, just go on Youtube and search until you find someone with a style that appeals to you.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=okQfa98uLlQ
Click to expand...
Yeah. I'd link but most of my responses would be. "Is ctrl+paint still free?" Or "is concept cookies archive streams still up or did jeettube finally yeet them?" Or "are torrent magnets allowed?"
Also that video is a pretty good example of what you do. Art is all effectively. Study simple forms. Try to copy them. Add smaller forms on top of the simple forms to make them more complex. If you want to git gud then the three things you need to do are have something you want to draw. Break it down into the largest volumes possible and slowly add more complexity. Have fun.

And when you get better you effectively observe patterns and figure out how to start off with more complex forms. Which again are just basic forms but more of them. Everything is just cylindroids, spheroids and Prismoids. They can be stretched thinner on one side like a cone or a pyramid or an egg. They can be wrapped around themselves like a donut or (I don't actually know what a more planar torus is called but it's just torus but prismy).

Its all at the end of the day just volume changes. And there are 3 basic volumes. If you want to start shading. It's ball, tube, box, stretched ball, stretched tube, stretched box, torus and box torus, then contruction and deconstruction of complex volumes into simpler volumes.

Arms are unironically one of the better body parts to do since they tend to have a lot of complex muscle forms while also allowing you to simplify them easily with fat or leaner muscle. So you can simplify deltoids as one head. Biceps and braciallis as one head. Triceps into two heads with a dimple in the middle. And the extensors and flexors as a chicken drumstick shape. For a leaner with sharper details for males and subtle details for females. Or bulk up and do multiple striations for each deltoid head, separate the biceps and braciallis visibly, show each extensor, and show visibility to all of the three tricep heads.

Basically. It's a good tutorial.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom