Secrets of Shading

Steven Zapata
My course on the Secrets of Shading is now on Proko! I teach you about the foundational knowledge you'll need to start rendering organic forms from imagination and how to better understand your references.
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alexandrienko
This course was such a fun and useful, thanks a lot! I also found your youtube channel and it’s so inspiring 🥳 Here’s my practice from your lectures and then my final drawing (forgive me for not taking responsibility for hands xd)
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grekosaurio
I'm so excited to begin this course :D thanks a lot!
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James Goodman
Well, I still suck at shading…
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Ross Cline
lol, my guess is that no matter how good you get you will never be as good as you want to be. If you are lucky it will be that way until you are dead.
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capozerk
is this course beginner Friendly? is it ok to go in when i have no idea of shading?
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Kalle-Samuli Riihikoski
Thanks @Steven Zapata This tutorial is amazing. I wish there is could be more tutorials from you. I see that you have tutorials on gumroad but they are quite expensive. If you could break those big tutorials into parts that I could buy one by one at the time then I would love to buy more from you. 800 dollars it's a little deep to me for single purhace.
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Steven Zapata
Those big ones are tickets for workshops, not pre-recorded tutorials- that's for people who want direct feedback and contact time with me as instructor. I have recorded those as I did them and will cut them up into "best of" edit and make that available in the future as an alternative at a much lower price.
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ganzaru
Hello, I'm recently thinking to advance to learn shading but is on a fence regarding this course: Since I'm mainly a digital artist, does the content of this course, it's concepts and techniques applicable to digital media as well?
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Steven Zapata
Absolutely! They're the same concepts I use when I do digital work.
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Lynx B.
I watched the trial lesson and drew along using my drawing tablet. It is very fun! I love shading!
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Adriel Lazarus
That is amazing! I have never shaded anything like this before. I am going to give this course a try nonetheless!
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Steven Zapata
Nice!
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Jean-François (Jeff) Durix
Some exercises I did based on this great course. Any feedback and recommendation is more than welcome
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Steven Zapata
I think these look great! The core principles are being well integrated here. The low hanging fruit here for advancement is to sharpen and clarify the impact of the strongest shadow shapes. Squint at the picture, or hold it up to a mirror from quite a distance away, and ask yourself if the shadow shapes that stand out the most say what you want. Are they too thin? Too thick? To blobby? Do they no have a light shape near enough to them to make them stand out? Maybe there are 4 really strong shadow shapes that stand out when you squint and it turns out they're all about the same size and shape and so they get a little boring.
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Jean-François (Jeff) Durix
A very insightful and didactic set of demos that inspired me and gave me a few directions to improve and vary my approach to shading. As I do mainly pen and ink I am curious to experiment how I will adapt the concepts to this media where stumping and erasing are not part of the game
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Steven Zapata
I use these same concepts when drawing in pen and ink, just with more precision of course. It definitely applies. If you wanted the full tool set of texture, gradient, and form, it would be good to do as complete a pencil drawing underneath as you can bear and then ink over that. If you always know what "part of the light" each little part of your drawing is in, that should tell you how to "move your hand" in that area.
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Eric T
I had recently found your course on gumroad and am extremely happy I did, It will serve as an excellent resource. Wonderful examples, teaching style, technique excellent, content well thought out and practical with logical progression. I greatly appreciate your effort. p.s. Yourself, Ahmed, Stan and Marshall, have all been instrumental in rekindling my passion for art, so I can't thank you enough.
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Steven Zapata
That is great to hear, thank you for the kind words and I'm honored to have played a small part in the rekindling of your art.
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