How to Practice Shading and Create Realstic Art

In order to do this practice exercise, you will need to have a photo of a shaded ball.

One of the most important keys to being able to master realistic drawings, portraits and illustrations is shading. Lot’s of people skip over this important exercise only to find out later that their work is not going quite right. Don’t be one of those people. Make sure you practice the simple exercises enough, until you can do this in your sleep.

The first thing that you’ll learn as concerns shading is to shade a ball. The first thing you do is draw a circle. You can use an overhand grip with light pressure on your pencil. Be sure it’s a 2 B pencil. Tip your pencil up on its point a bit so that you can be sure that it is a thin line.

By using an overhand grip you can draw the circle relatively quickly. Your ball may not be perfect, but that’s ok. Next, you’ll want to draw a shadow of the ball next to it. Then, you lower the angle of your pencil so that the full side of your lead is on the paper. Make sure you use an overhand grip. Then, lightly shade your entire ball. Make sure you are using short, back and forth matching motions when you do this. They need to be in the same direction with very light pressure on the pencil that you are using.

Your hatches should be half an inch to ¾ of an inch long. You’ll need to make at least 3 to 4 passes across your ball to fill it up. After you’re done with that, define the main highlight at the top left of your ball. Shade that area around that with a slightly darker value.

The edge of the highlight is not distinct and a little fuzzy. So you want to make sure that your hatching surrounding this area is going to have a soft look. Then shade the rest of the ball again.

Now stand back and look at it so far. Look at the most obvious shadow on the ball and take note of the crescent shape. This starts right at the top part of the ball, above the cast shadow. It ends at the bottom of your ball close to the left edge of the cast shadow. Shape your shadow by shading it in and make several passes over that area until it gets darker and darker.

Make sure that your shading is not going to get too dark. Squint your eyes at your drawing and make a comparison to your photo. Darken the right part of your ball into a little lighter value than the shadow area that you shaded. Be careful to leave the reflected highlight at the bottom portion of the ball.

In order to make your shading look realistic, you’ll want to add some subtle shadows. Squinting your eyes at the photo and your drawing is going to give you a whole new perspective. Refine your shading over the entire ball by keeping your eyes on the photo. Take only a quick glance here or there at your drawing if you have to. Compare one to the other by squinting periodically. Use light layers to gradually darken the shading so that it will match with your photo.

Observe the shadow of the ball and how it is darker than the ball. Now you’ll want to add cast shadow. This shadow is also darker at the bottom and is lighter than your ball near the top. Tip your pencil on its point so that you’ll be able to hatch in the small area of the shadow under your ball. Then you’ll lower the angle again. As you finish up, tip your pencil on its point and go ahead and darken the right edge of your ball. G

Your drawing of the ball and the shading exercise won’t take very long. By doing this exercise over and over again you will be able to do shading with no problem and make your drawings more and more realistic. Take your time with this exercise. Once you master it, you’ll be able to move on to more complex shading techniques.