Publication date: 01/04/2017

To make the drawing look more realistic, we make shadows, thereby creating volume for it.

The concept of the terms light, shadow, chiaroscuro, reflex, semitone and highlight

Light- the lightest part of the picture. Without it, it is impossible to give the object volume, since we see the shape of the object only in good light.

Shadow- the unlit part of the object. The shadow on the unlit side of the object is called its own, and the cast shadow is called the falling one. The own shadow is always darker than the falling one.

Chiaroscuro is the transition from the light area of ​​the object to the dark area.

Reflex- a reflection of what surrounds the object in the picture. The reflex will always be darker than the midtones and lighter than the shadow, since it is part of it.

Semitone- smooth transition from light to shadow without visible borders. It exists only where the rays of the sun fall on an object only at a certain angle.

glare- the light part of the mirror object. In the drawing, it often looks like a white spot reflecting the sun's rays from itself.

What does the shadow depend on?

The degree of illumination of an object depends on the lighting in the room, the angle of incidence of the rays and the light source, the distance between the object and the light source. There is natural and artificial lighting. Natural lighting is light from the sun's rays, and artificial lighting is light from man-made light sources. The greater the distance, the weaker the illumination of the object and vice versa. Lights and shadows in the foreground should be more contrast, as they are more visible. The planes that are directed towards the light are the brightest.

How to properly shade an object

First we need to correctly understand the shape that we need to shade. More complex objects such as a person, nature or things are built from the lightest forms of an object - a sphere, a cylinder and a cube.

So let's start with a pencil. Shadows are best drawn with 8b pencils. It is best to have simple pencils of different hardness to make the drawing more voluminous.

The next step is to sharpen the pencil. It is best to do this with a clerical knife, as the lead is longer and thinner.

Next, we make a sketch of our object, which we will shade. Lightly pressing the pencil, draw the outlines of the object. It is better to draw from nature, seeing the subject with your own eyes, so it is easier to determine the shadow. Put an object in front of you and turn on the light, and you will see that it casts a shadow, which you will later transfer to the drawing.

Then define a light source to map out where the subject's shadow will be.

strokes

strokes- dashed lines to help shade the object in the picture.

Choose the hatching method that suits you. There are three types of hatching: straight, circular and cross. Straight hatching is drawn with parallel lines and is great for objects like hair, dresses, and so on.

Circular shading is done using circles of different sizes and different pressures. This allows you to create a more realistic object.

Cross hatching is done with cross-shaped lines that allow you to give a darker shadow to your object in the drawing.

Always hold your pencil as horizontal as possible to keep the shadows natural.

I suggest that you try all types of hatching on a separate sheet and choose the one that is more convenient for you.

Let's move on to the most important thing - hatching. First, apply one layer of hatching to the object, draw another layer next to it so that our two layers do not intersect. If they intersect, then a dark place is formed, which is difficult to get rid of during work. After you have applied the first layers of shadows, in between the layers you apply the second layer, but the hatching should be different, that is, you need to change the slope of the strokes. Then, on top, where necessary, apply the third, fourth, fifth and subsequent layers of strokes.

Shading shadows

Now that the shading is done, we need to shade the lines. You don't have to do it with your fingers. To do this, you can take a cloth, a piece of paper and gently, with smooth movements, without pressing hard, rub the pencil. Then look at your drawing. If you like it, then it's good, but if not, then proceed to the next step.

Fixing bugs

The most common mistake is incorrectly defined shadow, highlight, and so on. To fix it, check again if you have a shadow in the right place and if you can see the highlight and reflex. The contours between light and dark places should not be clear. If dark joints have formed between the layers of hatching, take an eraser and gently touch the dark place. Repeat this step as many times as needed.

No one succeeds the first time. You must strive for excellence, go to your dream. Remember that even the greatest and most famous artists did not immediately begin to paint pictures, but started with simple things that you may be learning to draw.

This is a very old but still relevant article on special lighting effects.

If you leave out the details, highlight in the form of an asterisk, a stripe or a light - this is an optical effect that originally arose due to the shortcomings of optical devices. Since nothing could be done about it, the glare became an artistic technique. They are so accustomed to it that photos without glare in the usual place are now perceived unnaturally.

In addition, glare appears in our field of vision when we squint at bright objects. The nature of this phenomenon is slightly different, but since we started, we will talk about everything together.

If you want to know more about the physics of glare and similar effects, check Wikipedia for diffraction, diffraction grating, refraction, interference and more, there is a lot of useful information for a technical designer.

Training

You can start applying highlights only after the drawing of the object is over. To get it right, you need to bring the source to a confident-quality look, which takes an average of 30-300 minutes.

An important rule: in poor quality pictures, glare will always look disgusting. If you've ever wondered why the glow of a perfect performance looks like a pathetic clipart - here is the answer.

To overlay highlights, the picture must be of the highest possible quality.

To get a high-quality glare, you need to be able to answer two questions:

1. Where will he be?
2. What will it look like?

If everything is simple with the shape of a flare, then most of the technical designers do not care about its location. The easiest way to find out where it will be - look at the source and find the brightest place on it. As an exercise at home, I suggest going to any chrome keychain online store, download a dozen pictures and look for places on them where the glare will look best. This level of drawing is enough:

If there is no such place on the source, you should either think again “Do I need it?”, Or use levels, curves or contrasts to make such a place (moreover, try to make it natural).

In fact, glare appears in those places where the light from the source is reflected from the subject. I'm typing this text on a highway on a bright sunny day. The brightest places on passing cars - windshield pillars, corners of the trunk, bumper - those places where the metal has a small radius bend. It is understandable: the sharper the corner, the more it reflects, so the probability of a glare is higher there.

The minimum system requirement for glare is that the object must be exposed to direct and sufficiently bright light. It follows that they should not be in the shade, partial shade and in soft lighting.

There are materials that glare - glass, polished metal, some types of plastic, and there are those that scatter or absorb light - various fabrics, rubber or sand. Usually, if the material lets out sunbeams, this is a sign that it will also glare.

For advanced users: giving one item other properties often looks buggy, but great. If you make shiny rubber, fabric or wood, no one will mind.

An important rule: highlight should be appropriate.

The shape of the glare depends entirely on the optical device and the imagination of the technical designer. It can look like something, be a mix of several common effects, or not look like anything. However, successful outcomes share several similar properties. It is easiest to perceive the flare as a point source of light. It means that:

1. It is brightest in the center and becomes less intense towards the edges.
2. At the same time, it turns out that it is, as it were, surrounded by a luminous halo.
3. Sometimes rays diverge from it.

I thought about breaking it down for each item on the list, but I realized that it's more useful to let you model the best examples.

A friend of mine made a cut of highlights and glows from different designs - websites, flash videos, print ads and videos. Each of these highlights can be modeled or mixed with others (which will give an even better result). Enjoy.

Many of my students are afraid to draw glass. And this fear can be caused by various reasons. Some say that they see nothing in glass and do not know what to draw, because it is transparent. Others, on the contrary, say that there is too much of everything in the glass, all kinds of highlights, colors and reflections. Let's try to figure out what is the real problem in the image of glass and glass objects, and how glass differs from other materials.

Properties of glass objects

To begin with, I propose to recall that the natives exchanged glass for gold. And I don't think it's stupid, glass is really a very beautiful material! The natives did not know the objective value of glass and gold and evaluated them visually. So, sitting down to draw glass, try to see all its beauty. Look at him through the eyes of a native who saw something like this for the first time in his life. Glass can have all sorts of and most saturated colors, while it can transmit light, it can be transparent and literally invisible, glass can reflect the world around it to the smallest detail, or it can pass it through itself, fancifully deforming. I am definitely one of those people who look at glass objects and see an endless amount of incredibly interesting details.

Glass and light. How to draw highlights on a bottle

Does this mean that we need to draw all the highlights that we see in the bottle? Of course not! You always have to make a selection. Let's say you have a glass bottle in front of you. Six lamps shine on the bottle, and light from the window falls. All light sources are reflected in the glass of the bottle, and each can be reflected several times! In such lighting, you should not chase all the highlights, take those that are most clearly in shape. I always turn my head and watch the highlights dance across the surface. Glare, which then appear, then disappear, I usually ignore. Highlights that change their shape, but remain, I paint. I almost never copy the flare shape, as it is really unstable. I draw a highlight in a shape that sits better on the surface of this bottle. After noting the brightest white highlights, I begin to mark the reflections in the same way. I turn my head, watch how they distort, and choose the most interesting ones that fit better on the form. In the pencil drawing of the bottle, I try to mark as many highlights and reflections as possible so that they all have clear boundaries.

How associations will help draw a bottle

I often ask my students to describe glass, what associations they have with the word glass. Sometimes I ask them to hold the bottle in their hand and describe how they feel. As a rule, I hear something like - sharp, cold, smooth, hard, transparent, etc. And then I ask them to draw in such a way that their stroke can be described in the same words. The smear should be sharp, smooth, hard, and clear. Even if you draw an orange bottle, it should have cool colors, as you remember associatively that the glass feels cold to the touch. It is very important to change the nature of the stroke depending on the subject being depicted. Suppose, when drawing the bark of a tree, we will not impose a stroke in the same way as when depicting glass.

Features of drawing a glass bottle

We always start working from the brightest pure colors. If the bottle is orange, then you can start with pure yellow, orange, red and other colors. We always remember that it is never too late to apply dark brown, purple and other shadows, as well as reflections, but we can add bright and pure shades only in the first layer. Also, I do not use any one color in the glass image, I work out each glare and reflection marked in the pencil drawing separately with a different color, I collect it as a mosaic. In the early stages, this approach seems unnecessarily fractional, but in the end I generalize everything, and the bottle is assembled. When the surface of the entire bottle is collected by color, I wait for it to dry completely and apply dark reflections. To achieve a glassy sheen, you need to work very contrastingly. Light highlights should border on dark reflections without any transitional tones.

Most art schools and drawing courses teach you how to draw shadows first. Building and drawing such primitive figures as a cylinder, a ball, a cone, a cube is a rather tedious and uninteresting business. However, it is precisely such tasks that are the first step towards understanding the shape and volume of a geometric shape, as well as the ability to depict its dark and light sides - that is, the ability to draw shadows with a pencil in stages. In further artistic practice, the ability to correctly feel the dark and light sides will be a good help in any drawing.

If you want to make the study visual and realistic, you need to give it volume. In this article we will tell you how to draw shadows with a pencil correctly.

Light and shadow

Drawings should be realistic and pleasing to the eye. Therefore, it is necessary to correctly combine light and shadow in them. This will give the drawings contrast, depth and a sense of movement. shadows to make the drawings look more lively, attractive and interesting?

A bit of theory

Have you ever thought about what allows us to see the shape of objects? Let's reveal a secret: this is a collision of light and shadow. If we put an object on a table in a windowless room and turn off the light, we won't see any form. If we illuminate the object with a very bright lamp or spotlight, then, again, we will not see its shape. It allows you to see only the light that collides with the shadow.

Neither light nor shadow falls on objects at random. There are certain patterns. They allow us to assume how the light will be located on the object, on its forms, and where the shadow will begin. And a drawing person needs to know these patterns.

Elements of chiaroscuro

In drawing, the following elements of chiaroscuro are distinguished: glare, light, penumbra, own shadow, reflex and falling shadow. Let's consider each of them in order.

glare called a spot of light, which is located on a convex or flat glossy surface and is obtained due to the strong illumination of the object.

Light are the surfaces of the object that are brightly illuminated.

Penumbra called a faint shadow. It occurs if the object is illuminated not by one, but by several light sources. In addition, it forms on surfaces that face at a slight angle to the light source.

Shadow- These are those parts of the subject that are poorly lit. A falling shadow is one that an object casts on the plane on which it stands. And his own - the one that is on the unlit side of it.

Reflex is called a weak light spot, which is located in the region of the shadow. It is formed by rays that are reflected from other objects nearby.

The image of these light gradations allows the artist to visually depict the shape of an object on a sheet, convey its volume and degree of illumination.

Do these rules work for computer graphics?

Yes. Computer graphics is the same drawing. Therefore, how to draw shadows in AIS or Photoshop is no different from depicting them on paper. All the theory and all the rules that work for an image on canvas or paper are also valid for a computer.

Step 1: Choosing the Right Materials

How to draw shadows with a pencil? First of all, you need to choose the right pencil. Of course, you can draw shadows with charcoal, sanguine, gouache, and acrylic. But at first it is better to limit yourself to a pencil.

For shadows, special drawing pencils are used. They are sold in sets. A budget option can be found at any office supply store. There is also a special paper for drawing: it is better to choose a thicker and stiffer one.

There are many varieties of drawing pencils. There are soft (M, 2M, 3M, ..., 8M, 9M) leads, and there are hard ones (T, 2T, 3T, ..., 8T, 9T). In the sets of foreign manufacturers, M is replaced by B, and T is replaced by H.

For the image of shadows, a set of 3T, 2T, T, TM, M, 2M and 3M will be enough for you. For the image of light, it is better to use hard pencils, and for shadows - soft ones. So the drawing will look more natural and it will be easier to draw it.

Let's talk about paper. Too smooth sheets, those on which we print, are not suitable for drawing. Do not use too hard paper. It will be difficult to draw shadows on it. It is best to use special drawing sheets, which are sold in a folder in stationery stores. How to draw shadows correctly? First of all, get the right materials.

Step Two: Line Sketch

How to draw shadows in a drawing? First of all, make a line sketch of what you want to draw. It is advisable to do this from nature, but you can also use a photograph of the object. The most important thing is that the object you have chosen is still. In this case, you will have a lot of time to draw it.

Take a close look at your home environment. You can draw flowers, clocks, kitchen utensils, clothes. All of these are excellent subjects for sketching.

If you are using a photograph, it is better to print it in black and white. So you will be able to more accurately depict the outline and shadows.

Step 3: Achromatic Colors

How to draw shadows? When working with a pencil at your disposal, they all start with white and end with black, having several shades of gray in the middle.

How to create an achromatic scale? Draw a rectangle: this can be done on a separate sheet of paper or in the corner of your drawing. Divide this rectangle into five equal parts (you can have more, but 5 will be enough to start), then number them.

The very first square will be white, and the last one will be black. The parts between them need to be painted over with three different shades of gray, dividing them by tone. As a result, you will have something like the palette of your pencil: the first rectangle is white, the second is light gray, the third is medium gray, the fourth is dark gray and the last is the darkest tone that a pencil can give.

Step 4: Shadow Theory

How to draw shadows? To do this, you need to understand their nature.

Find the main light source. Observe that the lightest ones are often closest to the light, the dark ones are further away, and the shadows fall against it. Particular attention should be paid to reflections, as they can be the brightest point of the object selected for drawing.

Step 5: Choosing a Hatching Method

How to draw shadows? With hatching. It is superimposed over

Choose the way in which you will stroke the sketch, depending on the object itself, the light source and there are many types of hatching shadows, and the most popular of them are straight, circular and cross.

Straight line is the drawing of many parallel lines as close to each other as possible. This method is great for objects without texture and for drawing hair.

For circular hatching, you need to draw many small circles. With this hatching, you can create an interesting texture by scattering circles and supplementing them with lines. In addition, you can more clearly show the density of the object you are depicting by placing the circles close to each other.

Shading objects by drawing intersecting lines is cross hatching. This method is great for adding depth to a drawing.

Step 6: Pen Test

Try to make shadows. Since your drawing is still at the initial stage, you should not make them too dark. So you can easily erase them if necessary. Draw, gradually filling in the places that you need, and leave the lightest places white.

As you draw, compare your work to the object or photograph to make sure you're applying the shadows in the right place.

Step 7: Patience and Step by Step Work

Add shadows in several layers. They need to be gradually darkened, applying layer by layer. There should be a noticeable contrast between dark and light places. Remember to use the achromatic scale: the drawing should not be in the same gray tones.

There is no need to hurry. The process of shading the shadows is similar to the development of a black and white film: it should occur gradually. Patience is your key to success and beautiful drawings.

The more you deepen the shadows in the drawing, the less noticeable its contours will become. And rightly so, because in real life almost nothing has a black outline. The same should be reflected in your drawing.

Step 8: Blending the Shadows

Now blend out the shadows on your drawing. It is necessary to make them more realistic and smooth. You need to control the pressure so that it is not too strong and too weak. Blend until you are satisfied with the result.

If you do not have shading, you can use a small piece of paper. The eraser will help you brighten those places that you blurred by accident. It can be a highlight, or an outline that is not completely hidden under the hatching layer.

Most importantly, remember that most drawing people, including the most famous artists, made mistakes at the initial stage of their creative path.

• Between your hand and the paper you are drawing on, you can put a blank sheet of paper for printing: this way you will avoid spots on the drawing.
• In order not to dirty the sketch and correct errors, it is better to use a vinyl eraser. Erasers made of this material do not spoil the paper and erase pencil marks well.
• Don't use your finger to smudge the strokes.
• To make the difference between light and shadow more noticeable, you need to use good lighting.
• It is better to hold the pencil at a smaller angle to the plane of the paper in order to draw with the side of the stylus, and not with its tip. So the shadows will turn out more natural.

To prevent the drawn vector object from appearing flat, shadows and highlights are added to it. The techniques described in the lesson will help you draw a shadow and give volume to your vector drawing.

Shadows are usually located inside the subject and go along the edge, so it will be convenient to use the " Creating Shapes(Shift+M)" to cut off the excess or create a new shape based on two existing ones.

To do this, draw two offset circles as shown in the image below. Or other necessary figures. It is important to remember that when drawing a shadow, the main thing is to correctly draw a line inside the object and close it, everything outside will be cut off. Select both items. And grab the Shape Builder tool. Hold down the ALT key, click on the extra area and it will be removed.

If you want to make the drawing more beautiful, create a second shadow outline next to the first. The second shadow will be lighter than the first and this will add volume. After all, the more details are drawn, the more beautiful the drawing.

The color of the shadow and highlight should be, respectively, slightly darker and lighter than the main color of the subject. There are two ways to change the color:

1. Double-click on the color swatch to drag the pointer up or down.
2. Leave the color the same. But change the blend mode. For shadows, "Multiply" is suitable, and for the illuminated part of the subject, "Lightening".

The second method should be used with caution, as any effects may not read correctly in earlier versions. And for, it is better to avoid such tricks altogether and change only the color.

It also has a good volume effect. This tool allows you to "stretch" the mesh on the shape and paint each of the links in a separate color. With the help of a mesh gradient, you can not only create shadows and highlights, but also add photorealism to a vector drawing.

Other Ways to Draw a Shadow

In addition, beautiful shadows are obtained thanks to the Gradient tool. If you put black on both sides and change the transparency value from zero to 50%, a beautiful shadow with a smooth flow will come out. Combined with the Multiply blend mode, it will look very realistic, even against a colored background.

For example, an ellipse with a radial shadow is drawn under the ball, which also had to be changed to the shape of an oval. This shadow looks very realistic.

Below is another example of such a shadow. The collar of the shirt stands out a little thanks to the linear gradient with the lowest opacity values.

The folds on the clothes or the shadows are not the correct shape, therefore, the Pencil tool is suitable for drawing.

Often, the shadows are located along the edge of the clothes so that they do not look outside, we will cut off the excess with the "Creating Shapes" tool described above.

A real example of working with shadows can be seen in the lesson.

Video tutorial: Draw shadows and highlights in Adobe Illustrator.

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Making a shape shadow effect in CorelDRAW X6