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About instructor
Founder of Proko, artist and teacher of drawing, painting, and anatomy. I try to make my lessons fun and ultra packed with information.
LESSON NOTES
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In this warmup lesson, I'll show you how to practice clean, even shading by controlling pencil pressure and avoiding spotty shadows.
You'll learn how overlapping strokes and layering can help keep your tones consistent, and how different grips have different benefits.
Get the full lesson in the premium course - Drawing Basics
DOWNLOADS
warmup-clean-shading.mp4
651 MB
warmup-clean-shading-transcript-english.txt
19 kB
warmup-clean-shading-transcript-spanish.txt
19 kB
warmup-clean-shading-captions-english.srt
30 kB
warmup-clean-shading-captions-spanish.srt
33 kB
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Warmup - Clean Tone
Let's practice shading with clean tone and develop our dexterity for better pressure sensitivity.
Begin by drawing a rectangle or square, around 2-4 inches in size. The goal is to fill this shape with a consistent tone. Use strokes at any angle comfortable for you.
Don't limit yourself to one value. Practice shading light, medium, and dark tones in separate squares. Before you start, try choosing a specific value to target, like matching the value of a nearby object. This gives you a goal, and helps improve your ability to execute the value you intended..
Try to keep the tone consistent throughout:
- Consistent pressure: Try not to change how hard you press with the pencil.
- Overlapping Strokes: Ensure each stroke overlaps the previous one the same amount to avoid gaps.
- Circular Motions: Instead of lifting the pencil, use small circular motions. This helps create a smoother tone without visible lines.
- Layering: Build up the value in layers. Start lighter and add multiple layers to achieve the desired darkness. Changing the angle slightly with each layer can help fill in gaps and even out the tone. Be mindful of areas that may have become too dark, and adjust your pressure accordingly in subsequent layers.
Check out the Lesson Notes for more details.
Did two layers of graphite for each box. Should’ve made the boxes smaller so that I could fully shade the ones done with heavy pressure.
Warmups - very relaxing. First row with HB and 4B, second with 4B only. Inkbottle for weight.
I need to learn how to shoot the pics without the light impacting the values. The lightest value using 2H is washed out in this pic compared t my paper. If you have any suggestions on how to take better photos of sketches that would be great.
I did my warm up squares in my sketch book, but noticed that the paper was a lot more rough than I had anticipated for something like this. It felt like my shading was scratchy, and it was hard to get a good consistent spread, when the pencil kept getting caught on the paper. I tried it again on newsprint, to see if it was actually the paper and not just heavy handed nature and I feel it turned out a little better. I also tried using a woodless charcoal pencil for fun, and it turned out alright.
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2mo
That's a great observation. It's a good thing to experiment with different paper / pencil combos. I have one type of charcoal, that I only like on Strathmore smooth paper for example. Finding the combos that works for you is both fun and will supercharge your work, so keep experimenting!
I like visible strokes, they give an energy feel, but it sure must be controlled and intentional, and the soft clean hatching is a tool in our belt to master and use at need
I used this exercise to sample some new pencils my family gave to me. I found this a rather enjoyable and calming exercise.
Various Pencils on Printer Paper. This was my first attempt. I can see that I have a way to go, so I'll be doing value warmups prior to every drawing session.
I decided to follow-up with charcoal shading. I did this on smooth newsprint. I can make it work with charcoal. No luck at all with graphite. I didn't like my first attempt at single-pass with the vine charcoal, so I repeated it.
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4mo
Thanks for sharing! This is a great idea!
I tried a couple different pencils and also tried digital. I was really surprised that digital was actually pretty challenging to get the stylus pressure even and with a consistent tilt - real pencils seemed to work a little bit better for me on this exercise.
This will break your brain to be sure. Slow down, pay attention Tooth of trhe paper will affect how "clean" the shading is.
Here are some of the flat tones I applied for practice. Keeping consistent pressure was a bit of a challenge, but I think I'm well off with the basics.
I ended up making a good pencil for this project so that I could have better control over how textured values feel. Overall, I think I was able to find great worth in being able to adjust the brush size to vary the amount of smoothness a value receives.
did 3 warm ups 2 with digital graphite brush and one with digital charcoal brush, plus i've did a test run on a previous drawing from visual memory game...
question for Procreate users: what kind of brush should i use for shading? any suggestion? any technique for good shading in digital?
Back after a month's break and time to start on value. Value is one of my greatest weaknesses so I'm excited to dive in to improve my skills. This warmup was nice and relaxing, though I'm still trying to figure out the best way to shade consistently.
