Learn Shading for Digital Illustration - Quick Guide for Beginners

1. Introduction: [MUSIC] Hello, my name is Alexandra, aka the art mother. I'm an artist, illustrator, online educator. In this class, I'm going to teach you the core concepts of shading on your iPad and Procreate. I crafted six interactive worksheets that will help you to learn by doing. The prepared blank objects and the simple explanations will ensure you practice right after you get familiar with new concepts. No confusion, no unnecessary theories. The class comes with a full drawing broadside designed by me from real pencil marks, to give you the most authentic experience because we are doing something traditional digitally. In this class, we will cover the most important topics so we will be talking about the types of shadows, values, how light and shadow work on different shapes, how to approach a complex object. As most illustrations are colorful, we cannot leave color out of this class, so we will talk about the base color choices when it comes to shading, which will make your illustrations look more vibrant and lively. Shading can be a really overwhelming topic for our beginners, mainly if you didn't have any artistic education. Light and shadow has its theory. Picking up the skill of shading will ensure you avoid the mistakes coming from shading randomly or intuitively. Proper shading is crucial either in a flat design or in a realistic painting. Placing your shadows to the right place, you'll make your artwork look more natural and compelling. The class is perfect for those who have just started their illustration journey. They are beginners and they are not confident when they are shading or they're shading randomly or intuitively. Actually for anyone who would love to learn shading and has an iPad and Procreate because we are going to work in this application. You should have Procreate installed on your iPad. You should have a basic working knowledge of the program. After completing the worksheets, you will be ready to approach the class project. In this course, we're going to create a super easy project, we are going to shade an ice cream. As most people are learning shading the traditional way so with a pencil and paper, it was extremely exciting to me to craft this class for you and make it possible to learn shading on your iPad. I hope you are as excited as I am. If you're ready, let's get started. [MUSIC] 2. The Class Project : Welcome to the class. In today's class, we are going to create a cute illustration of an ice cream. I have chosen this subject because most illustrations are consisting of complex objects, not just simple shapes. When it comes to shading, light and shadow work differently on different shapes. This illustration is consisting of three different shapes so it is perfect for beginners to practice a bit more complex project and it is not really demanding even in color choices. After completing the interactive worksheets, you will be 100 percent ready to approach the project. There are three ways to do so. The first one is when you have full artistic freedom. So you will be tied only by the topic of the ice cream. You can create your own sketch, choose your own colors, set your own light setting so you can really apply your newly gained knowledge to your artwork. I suggest this way of approaching the project to those who are really confident in the art. If you are not that confident, you can still get a little creative. In the resources, I'm providing everything, the sketch, the brushes, the original file for reference. So you can just, for example, customize the sketch. You can choose it differently shaped cream or different topping or draw a different face, or choose your own colors. I recommend this one to beginners because you can test your knowledge and explore your abilities but still follow my guidance while I'm doing my own illustration. If you are not yet ready to go on your own, as I already said, I'm providing you everything and you can follow me 100 percent. But I recommend at least choose your own colors to add something from yourself to the illustration and that it is not a full copy. Regarding the resources, you can find them only when you're in a browser and I suggest you download them right now. You can find the resources in the Project & Resources tab below. Here is the place where you can create your project. You can read the project description, hit to See More button to read it whole. Here you can find all the resources. To download them, just hit Download. When you go to your files and downloads and go to Recents, you will find the file downloading here. After the downloads are completed, you just click and it will automatically import into Procreate. So when you go to your gallery, you will find the worksheet right here. Do this individually with all the files provided. Also with the brush set and the color swatches, when you click, it will automatically import into Procreate. You will have the worksheets, the color palette, the brushes, and the sketch, and the original file for reference. Now, when you have everything downloaded, open a worksheet to see what I'm talking about. The worksheets are consisting of differently named layer groups. Some of them are locked so that you cannot move them, and you will have clipping masks over them with a draw-here name so that you know where to draw. These worksheets have cheat sheets as well so that you can check how to complete a task, for example. So the brown side consists of eight textured brushes and two liners. I will be using the basic shader and basic liner in the whole class, but I have created this amount of brushes so that you have something to choose from. At this, drawing such sheet that also will be provided, you can just check what effects these brushes create. I suggest you create different file and just test them and see which one you like the best because all of these brushes can be controlled a bit differently. So with the tilting settings, you know what effects you have. So I really suggest that you try them out and play a bit around with them to find the perfect one. But I'm going to use the basic shader and basic liner and you can just do the same. As you as a student are part of this class, it is really important that you contribute to the class video project. When you will be finished with your illustration, I ask you to post it to the project gallery, not just because it will give you a sense of accomplishment and success, but you can see what other students are doing, you can see what results others are having, and you can share your results there and it completes the class. I will be also very happy if you would leave me a review, I really love to hear what you think. It is also important for other students to know what to expect from this class. So now if you have all the brushes and worksheets downloaded, you are ready to start. See you in the first lesson. 3. Types of Shadows: In this lesson, we will be talking about what types of shadows do we differentiate, what is value, and we will practice creating seamless gradients. Welcome to the first lesson. After you have downloaded all the worksheets, you have checked out the drawing set, and now you have all the brushes. Let's go to the first worksheet, which is named types of shadows. We differentiate between four types of shadows. Take a look on the apple here. The lightest part of it is the highlight. This is the part where the light hits the object the most. It is so light, it is almost if not fully white. The highlight goes gradually into the mid-tone. This is the part of the object that is in the middle range, so not too much affected by the light and It is also not in shadow yet, but it also gradually goes into the shadowy part. This is the core shadow, and it is the darkest part of the object as the full dimension of the apple or the object blocks the light here. There is also cast shadow. That is the shadow of the object on the surface it is on. Here is a little bounce light, which is a little reflection of the light from the surface. The shape of these shadows may vary in different lighting situations. Keep in mind in this class we are focusing on knowing where to put shadows to illustrations created from imagination, rather than shading objects that we are seeing in real life. If you would love to do so, no problem, use reference pictures and observe in detail. Now, let's talk about the values. By varying the level of darkness in our drawings, we can create the illusion of depth. This level of darkness is called value and is ranging from white to black. Now, take a brush from the drawing set and fill the blank shapes by varying pressure. Let's try to create a seamless gradient. Let's open the layers. You can see we have a cheat sheet here to see what we need to accomplish. You have guides on, off. This means I have created some reference points in the shape where you can see when you are entering the mid tone and when you are entering the shadow. Now you have the base shapes here that I actually forgot to lock, but I'm going to lock them. You have these clipping masks draw here. These are the parts of the worksheet that you don't really need to adjust or do anything. Let's go to the Shape 1 and draw here layer, and let's have the guides on. Now let's take a brush. In this class, I'm going to use the basic shader. Let's just choose black color. Make sure you have the opacity set to the maximum, and just dry out your brush. Now, where you see the highlight is starting not right from the edge. You should leave this part white, because we have white included in the value range. Now while you progress, you just start to increase pressure and at around mid tone try to find the middle range of the value, and where we enter to shadow, just push harder. You can pick the pen up. When it goes straight, it is the most opaque, so you can get the darkest color. You can go through this value range several times to create a nice gradient. Now as you can see, I have a bit of mistake here. How can I adjust this? You can choose the same brush for an eraser. Now you choose the eraser and when you go back you can add white. Make sure to have it on the biggest and have it at approximately the same size as your brush. Now, I can take back from the blackness and create a nicer gradient. You just play with it and make sure to really make it a seamless gradient. You can change between the tools by double tapping on your Apple pencil. You can go back to the brush and double-tap, and you have the eraser. This is the thing you need to experiment out with the brushes, how they are reacting to the tilt, and the pressure and find a way so you can create a nice gradation. Now, you need to practice without me being here with you. I suggest you turn off the guides and move to Shape 2. Now, you will have this first gradient as your reference. When I was at the beginning of my illustration journey, I was really afraid to go dark so every of my drawings were light and flat. But by adding darkness to your work, you add depth to it and your artworks will simply look more natural. Practicing doing these gradients will help you to get rid of the fear of getting too dark and also the opposite.You will learn that white is also part of the value range. You also need to keep in mind that not everything is in that deep shadow, that it is fully black on the other side. You can see the value range of an artwork where you put it to grayscale. Let's just take a look on the final project for a second. I will turn on the Value Check layer. Now you can see it in a grayscale. You can see that it is not fully black and not fully white anywhere. You can use adjusting values, so going lighter or darker on different parts to make your illustration work in grayscale because that will make your illustrations look good in color as well. The value range may differ in different artworks and illustrations. The point is that you need to practice the seamless gradients, and to be aware of that you can go darker and you can go lighter to make a bigger contrast. In this lesson, you learned to name the types of shadows, you have created a value range with a seamless gradient, and now we are ready to move on to the next class to learn a bit more about light direction. 4. Light Direction: In this lesson, we will talk about light direction and practice applying radial shadows. Light and shadow when an object are affected by the light source and its location. Defining a light source even in an imaginary scene will help you with the placement of the shadows and its setting and overall mood in your illustration. As you can see, we have three spheres here with different lighting directions. Here we have a top left, a front, and a full top. Highlights will be where the light hits the object the hardest. It is noted with the black dot on the wireframe. It is in a circle as light on round objects create a radial shadow because light always wraps the shape of the object. Shadows will be at the opposite side of the object as the shape of the object blocks the light, and shadows follow the object's curve and create a radial gradient from the highlight to the darkest shadow. The cast shadow also appears on the side opposite to the light source. Here, you really need to pay attention to light direction. I will show you some little guides I have drawn. By drawing little guidelines, you can define the placement of the shape of the cast shadow. For example here, the shape of the sphere and the direction of light makes the cast shadow on the right and distorts it a little and makes it longer. In the front light, the cast shadow moves backwards so we can't even really see it. At the top light, the cast shadow is fully below the shape and it is defined by the dimension of the sphere. There is a small amount of light that usually bounces back from the surface to the object. It is called bounce light and it helps us in drawing to defer the shadowed part of the object from the cast shadow. You can see the bounce light right here. You don't really see it because you cannot see the cast shadow, and here you also see the bounce light. Now let's get into the practice. Here you have an interactive wireframe. Go to the Layers, you have two layer groups, the Worksheet and the Practice Here so obviously go to Practice Here. Now you have this light. I will make it bigger here so that you can see, and we are talking about this part of the worksheet now. You have the light. You can move this as you wish and as you will practice to define where the light is hitting the sphere. You have the wireframe which is locked. You have a cheat sheet to see how to shade the sphere, and I will just show you, let's say you move the lights here. Now you can take a look on this cheat sheet, you can just move it, and as you move it place this radial white circle to the dots where it is somewhere to the middle. You will see how to shape the sphere. This is a really amazing resource for you. Every time you will need to see how to shade a sphere, you can just move this light dot somewhere. You can just hit on the cheat sheet and move it there and you will see how to shade it. But let's just go back to the original place. Yes, it is here, and let's see the other layers. Here's the Base Circle, here is the Cheat Sheet folder, Drop Shadow of this sphere, that you can move around. Let's just shade the sphere together. Turn off the cheat sheet and keep the wireframe, keep the light, and go to the draw here layer that you have above the base circle. Now you can just choose the basic shader. As I told you, light and shadow wrap the objects. This is why we have this circle here so that you know how to go around with the shading. You have to tilt the pencil and go lightly around this circle. You can just make a little radial gradient. You will do actually exactly the same you have done with the value range, but in a circular way. I will just shade this again. In my imagination, I tried to follow this circle with the other layer of darkness, which will be the core shadow. I will try to make nice gradient. If I overdo something, I can just go back to the eraser and just get back from it. It is a really nice way to practice radial shading. I just loved this bounce light here. But actually, I can just simply erase it from this part. I think this is a bit too dark, so I will just get back from it. [NOISE] Now, I will just draw this drop shadow below the base circle, so I have the layer for it. I will just make it a bit smaller. I have this shape that I can fill. Actually, you can play with it and add a bit of different shadow, but it is already created, so you just fill it. To change the shape of the drop shadow, you need to go to the base shape that you have here, hit the Transform and you can choose Freeform and you can make it a bit smaller, just like that. Now I have a well-shaded sphere. You can use this as a reference just to look at there. Or you can turn on the cheat sheet and you can move it somewhere else and move the light somewhere else. To see how to shade it, turn on the cheat sheet and do a different layer. Or just clear this draw-here layer, and you can just try out different versions of the same shape. We have a layer for bounce light, so you can just add it with white if you want. But the best way is to erase from the shading so that you have it on one layer. You can just turn off the wireframe and the light and now you have a really nicely shaded sphere. I suggest you do some practice, try out several light directions and try to apply the theory you have just learned. You always have a cheat sheet to help you so don't be afraid of it. It was really a heureka moment when I discovered I can create this worksheet for you and actually this cheat sheet for you. Realizing the radiality of shadows will help you in the future, and it was really a mind-blowing thing for me when I realized that radial shadows look like this, incredible. In this lesson, you learned how light direction affects shadows. You practiced placing radial shadows. Now you're ready to move on to the next lesson, where we will learn about shading round objects. See you in the next lesson. 5. Shading Round Objects: In this lesson, we will shade round objects. We will be shading some basic geometric shapes and also objects similar to them. Here we are at the shading round objects interactive worksheets. You can see that we have some basic geometric shapes here and some shapes or objects that are similar to them. Now we have the cheat sheet turned on, so I will just turn it off and we have the basic shapes. If you open the layers, you will see layer groups for all shapes and objects. Now you have a set lights direction for this practice, but obviously, you can change it later when you will practice on your own. You also have a cheat sheet for the light set like this, so that you have a reference. Here are the layer groups. Let's open the sphere and you will have the light set and you'll have a cheat sheet for that. You already practice the sphere, but let's just do it one more time, mainly if you took some break after the previous video. Let's just go to the DRAW HERE section again. Turn off the cheat sheet and choose the basic shader and now imagine the circle around the dot because now we don't have it. I will just shade the whole and do the exact same thing I have done in the previous video. I again double-tap for the eraser so that I can make the transition smoother. I already left out some space for the bounce light, but with an eraser, I will just enhance it. Now you can just go to the cast shadow. Now we don't have a shape for it, so you need to practice it as well. Choose a basic shader and to the cast shadow, try to find the shape of the cast shadow. You will have a cheat sheet also here so you can see it. You can just approximately find a round shape and try to define the shape of this cast shadow by the dimension of the sphere. The cast shadow will be approximately from here, a bit longer, like here, because the light is coming from this direction and I can just set an approximate size up for it. Now we have a sphere. Let's move on to the apple. Again, I will just go to the apple, I can see the cheat sheet here. I have a similar light direction. Now I go to the DRAW HERE layer, choose the brush, turn off the cheat sheet, and again try to apply the circular shadow around the apple. At the top, we will have a bit of a smaller shadow here below this thing. Also think about that this part for example will be lighter because the light can hit it as well, also at the top. Try to figure out the dimensions of the object you're shading. We're going from this light approximate circle to a bit darker and then darker value. Try to follow this radiality of the shadows. Go from that light to the darker. Leave a little bounce light here. You will have a little shadow up here because this roundness of the apple, we block the light going there and maybe you will have light around at the top here as well. It is good to look at reference images to see the exact shapes of the shadows but now just try to do it this way to see the radiality. Now let's go to the cast shadow and you can keep in mind that adding cast shadow to a drawing usually adds a lot to the overall realism of the drawing. You can just get a little back from the cast shadow here from an eraser with a bounce light so it will add again to the realism of this image. Now let's move to the cylinder. Light on the cylinder will fall fully on its side and the top. As you can see, this gradient will be rather linear than radial, and it is called actually linear shadow. Now you can take out your skill that you practiced when you were doing the value range at the beginning. Start from the side which is in light, and gradually go darker. As you can see, the bounce light here will reflect to the side in the shadow. Now the question is if the cylinder is empty or full. We have a layer for that as well. If it is full, the top will be fully exposed to light. I just added a little texture here so it is not that artificial. If it is empty, look at this, how the shading is done. The direction of the shading in the inner side will be flipped as the light will hit the opposite side of it. We do a seamless gradient linearly and add the inner side to the opposite direction. Let's just turn off the cheat sheet and let's do it together. We have two base shapes. We have the Light Direction set here, and we have the Base Shape. Go to the DRAW HERE layer above the Base Shape, choose the basic shader and now as the light hits it this way, I will make it a bit smaller, I will do a linear shading like this. This will be light, this will be darker, and this will be darker again. [NOISE] To add the bounce light, you just take the eraser and take away from the side and a bit from the bottom. Now this was so easy. If you want it to be full, so you can go to the top shape, and here you have a draw here layer again. You can just add a bit of a shadow like this and you are done. If you want to experiment, now try to do this flipped or reversed version of the linear shading. Looks amazing. Now let's go to the cast shadow, and as the light is coming from here, we will have a cast shadow [NOISE] approximately at the shape of the main object. This will be rather like this longer shape right here. I think that's looks amazing. As you can see, we will move to the mug and it will be shaded similarly. Let's close the cylinder, let's go to the mug. We have freebase shapes here again. We have the mug base shape, the top, and mug handle. Let's just start with the mug base shape. Here is the mug cheat sheet, so you can just turn it off and go to the base shape and get the basic shader, and now do the exact same thing. We go linearly and gradually darken the whole, like this. You will have this dark lining, the darkest part as if, and this is the core shadow. I already left some place to the bounce light, but you can just erase from it so that you have this bounce light and also again add to the bottom. Now let's go to the mug top draw here layer, choose the basic shader, and I'll draw it reverse. Nice. Now, if you wants to have a bit of an edge, you need to get the eraser, make it smaller, and just erase from the side a bit, so that you have this edge off the mark, if you know what I mean. You can go to the other layer and erase from it as well, and you have this nice edge. Now go to the mug handle draw here layer, select the brush, and actually it will be almost fully dark as it is at the back of it. Maybe it will get a little light at the top, so you can just erase from it, add from the middle as the light will bounce back. It will be dark here, it will be lighter here. Now go to the cast shadow, and finished. How amazing is that and quick? Let's move on to the final two shapes, and we have a cone here. Now this is again a different shading. It is between the radial and the linear shadow. As we have a sharp top and a circular base, actually the shadows will have a triangular shape. If you take a look on it closer, the highlight is triangular, the mid tone is triangular, and the shadow is triangular as well. Now I will turn off the cheat sheet, go to the draw here layer, get the basic shader. I'm going to make it a bit smaller. We have the light from here, so we will start lightly from there and I will make it a bit smaller and try to do a triangular shape. It is not easy to do these triangular shapes. Not the most perfect, but you can check the sheet cheat sheet. Let's go to the cast shadow. Actually the cast shadow will be triangular as it is a triangle. I will draw an approximate triangle to the opposite side as the light is coming from here and simply shade it. I forgot to bounce light from the base shape. Go to the base shape and erase a bit from it in the bottom so that you have this nice differentiation. It looks amazing. Now let's see the bowl which is our final shape. Close the cone and open the bowl and you have the bowl. Now, we will combine these together. As you can see, the bottom of the bowl is like the upside down cone, and we will have the inside shading that we practiced in at the mug. But now the light is coming from this side, so I will turn off the cheat sheet, we have the base shape, and draw here layer above it. I will choose the basic shader. This is a lighter part, so it will start with light and I will go gradually to this dark. It is actually a cone that has a cut off bottom or top, if that makes sense. Now, I call it finished. You can just imagine that this shape is continuing to this cone, and as this is going a bit outside to differentiate, I will add a bit of light down here, like this and like this. This is a linear shadow, so it is going to the shadowy part. I will add a bit of a bounce light here. I add a bit of a shadow below it so that we have this edge. Now let's move to the top shape draw here layer and do the same. Like this and we have an edge here already. Go to the base layer and just erase for me at the edge so that you have this edge again. Looks nice. Now go to the cast shadow and as the light is coming from that side, you just add a little shadow approximately at the shape of this mug like this. It is like an upside down cone, something like that. I guess this was a great practice. We have learned so much. In this lesson, you have practiced placing radial, linear, and triangular shading. You learned how to shade objects that are empty, or full. You have learned how to adjust the shading of this basic geometric shapes to real objects. Now I suggest you take a little break so that you don't get too overwhelmed. Personally after creating anything or practicing too much, I get tired. It takes so much out of me, so I need to step aside a bit and then return to it later so that I don't do too much of something because then I lose interest and I don't want this to happen to you. I suggest you move on with the class tomorrow or in a few hours or after a cup of tea. After your little break, see you in the next lesson when we are going to talk about shading objects that have edges. 6. Shading Objects with Edges: In this lesson, we will take a look on how light works on objects that have edges. In objects with edges like a cube or a pyramid, the shadows are not grading into each other smoothly or in a gradient, but they are grading in levels with a clear edge. You can see the value range here. It is not a seamless gradient anymore, but the levels of darkness change on the sides of the shapes. Now, take a look on the cube where the light hits it is the top. That side will be the lightest. The side opposite to the light source will be the core shadow, and what is left is the front side, that will be the mid-tone. The cast shadow and the bounce light work similarly as before, so the object will block the light in its shape and the bounce light will follow the edge of the side in the shadow. Now, let's try to shade this cube together. If you go again to the layers, you will find the layer groups. Let's find the cube. Now, again, we have three shapes. We have a cheat sheet that we will turn off. You have the light direction that you can change if you want to try out different lighting settings. Let's start with the front as that will be in the mid-tone. Let's go to the Draw Here, a layer of it, and choose the base shader and just draw a middle range here. Let's go to the top. Here, it is totally in light, exposed to light, but I would love to add just a really light texture like this. Let's go to the other side. Here is the Draw Here layer of it, and let's make it a full shadow. As I start to bounce, light will be here as well. Choose the eraser, and just erase a bit from the shadow we part [NOISE] like this. Now, let's go to the cast shadow. Again, the cast shadow will be here and the shadow we part in the bit distorted shape of the original shape. Something like this. Amazing. Now, let's practice the shading of other geometric shapes with edges, and let's take a look on the pyramid. We see only two sides now. One will be a light and one will be a darker mid-tone as the shadowy part will be at the back of the pyramid and the cast shadow will actually note the shadow we part. Turn off the cube, go to the pyramid, turn off the cheat sheet, and let's find the base shape here and the Draw Here layer above it. As we said, this is going to be in light, and I will just add the really light layer here. That is not fully white, just to have a texture. Let's go to the side and the Draw Here layer above it, and just simply make it darker. You don't need to do it fully black. Let's imagine we have the opposite side in full shadow, and now let's go to the cast shadow and try to imagine this shape. Try to draw a triangle from this edge to this edge, and that will be the shape of the cast shadow, and you can make it dark. [NOISE] Now, we have the pyramid. How easy was that? Now, let's go to the hexagonal prism if I'm pronouncing it right. Here, we have the light source. Here, you have to cheat sheet I'm going to turn off, and this is actually the hardest shape we are going to shade because it has four different base shapes. I'll just take a look on the cheat sheet. As the light is coming from this side, this side and the top will be light, the front will be in the mid-tone, and this part will be in shadow. We have this side on a different layer, this side on a different layer. Let's just start with the right side. Go to the right side and the Draw Here layer. Turn off the cheat sheet and add a little bit of a light shadow. [NOISE] The front will be part of the base shape. Go to the base shape and go to Draw Here layer and make it a bit darker like this. Now, go to the left side and the Draw Here layer and make it fully dark. Now, we have the top and the Draw Here layer above it. Let's just add a little texture and go back to the left side and erase a little bit from the bottom and the side for the bounce light. Now, let's go to the cast shadow and approximately try to find this edge that is blocking the light, and it is blocking it like this. You can make it a bit darker below. [NOISE] Wonderful. In this lesson, you learned about how light works on objects that have edges. Now, we arrived to the part of the class where I can say we have covered most of the theory. You had a chance to practice a lot, and I'm sure you now understand how light works on different shapes. Now, the most interesting and fun part of the class is coming when we are going to shade a complex object, that is an ice cream. If you are ready, see you in the next video. 7. Shading Complex Objects : In this lesson, we will take a look on how to approach complex objects that are consisting of more geometric shapes. Every object can be broken down to basic geometric shapes. For example, here we have a sphere, a cone, and a cube up in the chocolate. The shadows work accordingly. There is a radial shadow in the sphere, there is a triangular shadow on the cone, and some linear in these runoffs, and also the levels of shadow on the chocolate cube here. Let's just shade this little ice cream together. Go to the layers, and now we have every shape again separately, and you have the cheat sheet layers. I will just turn it off and you have this basic image here. Now, choose the basic shader, and let's move from the cone. Go to the drawing layer, and as we can see, the light is coming from this side, so it will hit the whole complex object at the side. We will have this triangular shadow approximately here. I love to shade cones the opposite way, from the top to the bottom. Please, sorry that I turned it upside down. I will make my brush a bit bigger, and I will shade this shape. I will try to make this triangular shadow here. I keep again a bit light here for the bounce light, and I will just make a bit of gradation here. I will get back from it with an eraser, so everything is perfect. I try to make the highlighter also triangular and also part of this shadow. Looks nice. I already have the cone. Let's take a look on the sphere up here. Yeah, I will go to the ice cream here, and I will define this place where the light hits it. I have another layer on the top so that you practice a bit more, and we will have this radial shadow. Nice. Now we have a bit of a runoffs. We have this linear shadow here, I will make it a bit lighter at this part. Like this. We have light at this part at the runoffs. It will be similar to the cylinder. At this side, it will be darker and we'll go gradually to the light. As this part of it will be in shadow, I will not really play with these shadows in these run-offs. I can add a little bit of light actually, like here. Or to connect these runoffs to the main sphere. I will add a bit of a bounce light here so that it's lighter. Now let's go to this ice cream top, and I will just simply follow the base shading I have just done here, I still have to highlight here. I will just erase for me to make it a bit blurry. I will add a bit of a cast shadow of the object right here, so it will have this cast shadow, and this topping following the shape of the sphere. Now let's go to the chocolate. Let's go to the draw here layer, which will be the sides of the chocolate as we have the front separately. This side of it will be dark. This will be in a midtown and the front will be light. I will just add a little bit of texture to it. Let's just take a look on the cast shadow. We already added a cast shadow to this cube, and let's just add below this cone because it will cause a bit of a cast shadow below these runoffs, and also at this top shape. I will go to the base shape and add a bit of this cast shadow below this runoff. It will differentiate as levels a bit. Walla, we have a properly stated ice cream here. Now, you see that when you approach a complex object from your illustration in the future, you will need to break down its form to basic geometric shapes and apply shadows according to them. In my personal work, I still sometimes fall into the mistake of shading intuitively. However, after years of practice, this intuitive shading is not that bad. Revisiting these theories and sometimes getting back to practicing these basics help me keep my shading skills fresh. I suggest you keep these worksheets on your iPad and come back to it here and there when you have some free time and do some exercises. In this lesson we practiced shading complex objects. Now you are ready to move on to the last lesson before approaching the class project. In the next video, we will learn about the best color choices when it comes to shading, because color is also a big question mark for some. If you're ready, let's move on. 8. Shading with Color: In this lesson, we will talk about the easiest and best color choices when it comes to shading. When creating a colorful piece and as most illustrations are colorful, we need to think about which colors to use. We already learned about values and they apply also to color. We need to choose some darker colors for shading and lighter colors for the highlights. The general rule is not to use full black for shading because it makes colors dull and there are more interesting ways to create shadows. The easiest way to shade an object, and this is what I suggest to do for beginners, is to choose a hue, for example, red, and choose its darker version for shading, and a lighter version for the highlights. Let's say I choose a red and then I go to the classic. I just simply choose a lighter version of it for light and a darker version of it for shadow. Even if this works well, just take a look on the other color right here. Can you see that these spheres are more powerful? In this column, the shaded object gets more vibrant and natural. They are shaded with the darker version of a different hue. Here you have the same hue in a darker and lighter version, and here you have a different hue in a darker version. I have collected here some color combinations. You can notice that colors close to each other on the color wheel are combined. Take a look on the color wheel. We have the desk here. Red is combined with purple. It is next to it. Then we have oranges combined with dark saturated red. Yellow is combined with a dark reddish brown. Green is combined with dark teal or blue. We have blue here with dark purple, we have purple here with dark magenta. We have pink here with dark red. These colors are not too far on the color wheel. If you go to the color harmony, you will learn about color harmonies. You have analogous that are colors next to each other. Try dig, they're in a triangle, and they're complimentary, they're opposite to each other. These colors look great in illustrations together, they create a great contrast and they make things pop. But when you mix them for shading, they don't look that good. When you choose colors for the shadows, choose darker versions of hues that are neighbors. Now go to the worksheets layers and you can find the practice here layer group. Let's try to choose a color for the shadows of these colored shapes. You can just simply pick the colors that I provided. You can find the base colors and shadows, so you have this here, you have the base colors and their shadows below that. You can use that, but you can just intuitively trying to find a color that will shade well. Go to the practice here layer and you have all the colors. Let's go to the red. You can directory actually shade to its shape if you wish. I will just choose the dark purple to make this a bit quicker. I can shade it like this. For the highlight, I will just use a light version of the same hue, so not to mix hue a bit up that much. Now, the dark saturated red for the orange, lighter version for the light, and then for the yellow, I will choose this dark reddish brown, and for the light, I will just choose lighter version of the same hue. For the green, I will choose this dark teal and choose the same lighter version, for lights. Let's go to the blue. I will look and choose a dark purple, and the lighter version of the blue or the light. Actually, you can just use white for this purpose. Let's go to the pink, though I'm in purple. You choose the dark magenta. Like this. You can just choose white for the light. Let's go to the pink, like this. I will just choose the light here. You can get creative and try this on your own and pick your own colors. The point is that you try out shading with color. Until now, you practice your shading skills only in black and white. It is a bit different to work with in color. My pro tip here is to note to yourself the best color combinations you discover. Personally for me it is that I love to shade blue with indigo. I love to shade orange with dark brown. Generally these color combinations then work well together in an overall illustration. Color choices can also define your artistic voice. Developing a color palette and color combinations that work well together and having the colors for shadows can help you to build your artistic voice. In this class, we have learned about the best color choices when it comes to shading. Now the class project is coming. See you in the next video and let's start applying our new knowledge. 9. The Final Illustration: In this lesson, we are going to start the class project. As I already told you, you are free to do your own illustration, customize mine, or follow me step-by-step. Open the illustration file, you'll have a sketch included here. You can just import it into a different file if you wish, because you have that also in the resources. You'll have a value check layer, which I will show you in a second how to make and you can just check your values in your illustrations with it and you will see your whole illustration in grayscale. I really recommend to add this layer to your every illustration so you can really check what you are doing. To create a value check layer, I will just show you how to do it. Create a new layer, choose gray, and fill it. Now when you go to this end button, you will change the blending mode and change it to color. Voila, you have a value check layer. I will just delete this and have mine here. You have the original file to see how I've done mine. You will have also the layers I'm now going to create so that you can see how I progress. Now I turn on the sketch, I turn off the final original. I have set the background color to this light pink. You can set it to light gray. I love to set it to light gray or a different, like grayish or a light color, not fully white so that I can see my colors better. Now what you need to do with the sketch is to reduce its opacity so that you can see through it, and actually create a new layer below the sketch and this will be the code. I will rename it. Now the colors, you have the color palette here. For the cone, I'm going to use this yellow. You can choose any brush. What I'm going to use is the extreme liner. Now the extreme liner when pushed hard, is leaving these marks around. I will try not to push that hard, but to keep it nice because if I'm not pushing that hard it is not leaving that mark. I will turn this upside down so it is easier for me to draw and I would just start drawing the cone. When I've filled it with color, I will just go around the edge, and fill the missing pixels because as it is a textured brush, it will leave out little pixels. Pay attention with extreme liner because in other layers it works weird. If you need to fill some more pixels, just choose the basic liner and just do it with that. I alpha lock the base shape and I will choose the color for the shadow. I had this dark reddish, and now choose the basic shader. Let's have the light source here, as we did the shading without color. Now if you want to add back to it, you can just grab the base color and just try to make this nice, seamless gradient, triangular gradient. If you want to switch back to the color you worked with, you just hold down this. You don't need to pick it up again, but it will just switch back. If you do this on a separate layer, you can, again, work like as we did with the pencil. I mean in black and white, so you can just use an eraser to erase. To add that texture, just create a new layer and go to the brushes where you have the textures and you have the grid there. Now choose that lighter color and just draw a grid, a bow, the cone. Bigger one because we're going to rotate it. Select it and rotate it to do shape so that it fits it and just hit to this layer a clipping mask and it will clip it. Now, I want to duplicate this layer and select this layer, hit "Select" and fill with black. Choose black color and hit "Fill Layer" and now and move it like this. I will just show you closer. Move this layer next to it. This will be the shadow of this texture and as the light is coming from there, so this side. The shadows will be like this. The light is coming from the top, so this part will be in shadow. Now, I will go to adjustments and Gaussian blur and blur it a little bit. You go further. But it is a bit too harsh, so just simply lower the opacity. Then Alpha lock this layer and choose the color for the shadow and just go about it and darkened a little bit and add this texture of it. You can choose even white to add light to the side. To make it a bit lighter. You can go to the base, and you can add a little light here as if it was like glowing. Now we have the cone. Let's move on to the ice cream. I will create a new layer, and I will choose my purple. Again, choose my extreme liner and just simply blocking the shape. I will choose the basic liner to fill in the missing pixels. Now turn off this layer, create a new layer and do the same with this top shape. Again, choose the extreme liner. The reason I'm choosing the extreme liner is that when you just block in a shape like this and you want to grab a color into it, you will have a filled shape. But with the basic liner, I usually get some holes in the line coming from the texture of that brush and it is just annoying. I will just drag it here, go back to basic liner, and just simply fill in again the pixels. Actually, this extreme liner leaves these little marks as if smudging and adds so nice little natural effect because that is really accidental if you have those after illustration. They can be annoying, but actually traditional media can be annoying as well. I just shade it. What I'm going to do first is to add the light. Choose the basic shader brush and let's add the light here. I will just Alpha lock this layer. I will go to the layer below. Continue this shape of the light a little bit. Now let's choose the shadow color for the purple and go to this layer and I will just make it bigger and try to add this radial shadow here. I will add back the purple a bit. With this process, we are actually also adding a bit of a texture and go to the topping. Now, let's think about the cast shadows. As we said, this cube, will have a cast shadow here. I may make it a bit smaller. You'll have a cast shadow here. This topping will have a shadow on this lower level. I will add a bit of a shadow below it. Also this part will have a shadow on the cone and go back to this yellow and choose this darker version. Let's make it a bit darker and is runoffs will also have shadows. I will choose the bits darker version here, and I will add this to this grid as well, so it's not that light. Now let's do the chocolate. Let's create a new layer for the chocolate. It will be brown. I will choose this [NOISE] lighter brown I guess. Choose the extreme liner and again, I will just look in the main shape. Now I will not make different layers. I will just choose a darker version right from here because we have so many browns here. I will just alpha lock it and choose the basic shader. We said that this part will be darker and this will be the mid-tone and this will stay light. What I will just add is with the basic liner these little lines for detail. Now I can just turn off the sketch and I have a wonderful ice cream here. What I miss is this part of the runoff that we cannot see. I will just simply go back to this layer of the ice cream and just add a little bit of shadow with the basic shader, so that these runoffs can be seen. Now turn off the sketch and we can see it, wonderful. The final thing is to add some eyes, so I will just choose white. I will choose the basic liner. I will just draw a circle, holds down for the quick shape function. You will have added shape here. You can choose circle and just fill the shape. I will choose black for the eyes, and you can add a little light with white to it, so you have normal eye. You can just duplicate it, select and place the other eye. Just with simple black, I will just draw a cute mouth. What's left is to sign it. What you can do is to the background what I already did, that I chose darker magenta and the basic shader made it a lot bigger and just added a bit of a gradient to the background. It will add a bit of the [NOISE] texture if you think it is too harsh, simply just lower the opacity, but it will be still there. One last thing, and it is the cast shadow. I will just choose black, choose the basic shader, and make it smaller. Shade a little circle here. I will choose the adjustments Gaussian blur. I will just blurry it and place it below the ice cream and as if it was falling. Amazing. I call this illustration finished. See you in the next video where I'm going to show you how to upload your project. 10. Upload Your Project: [MUSIC] Here in the project and resources part, you can hit Create Project. For this, you will need to save your final illustration as a JPEG, so hit Share, hit JPEG, and just save image. When you go to a project, add a title. You can just write something, a few words about the class. What do you think? What was your experience completing the class project, et cetera? Here you can just choose a photo from the photo library and then loved the class. Wonderful. You can experiment with creating a cover image, the cover image as the size. What you can do for the cover image is to choose your illustration without this background gradient because it will be a bit distracting. You can just select all the layers and hit Transform and just move it in this direction. You know what, you can just write your name here or you can just add a layering, I will just add text. Hit Add Text and we write Ice-Cream Project. I will just move it here. I will add it, the text. I will just hit Edit Text and Edit Style. I will do a bit of a drop shadow to it, so what I can do is to duplicate the layering and rasterize and hit Alpha Lock this level, and select the layer, fill it with black, and moved like this. Gaussian blur and blur it a bit. I cannot blur it because it is Alpha locked, so I will alpha-lock it and now hit Gaussian blur and blur it a bit like this. Maybe either lower the opacity. It looks nice. I will save it, share it as a JPEG, save image. Now I will go back to Skillshare. It was there. Submit. Now I have a nice cover for my image. It will look way better if you create a separate file for the cover of the project. Now I can publish and now I'll see you in the final video where we're going to summarize what we have learned in this class. 11. Final thoughts: [MUSIC] Congratulations, you have finished all the worksheets and completed the class project and I think you can be really proud of yourself. In this class we have covered so much, so let's just do a little recap. In this class, you have learned about the core concepts of shading on six interactive worksheets. You have learned to name the types of shadows and practice to create a value range with a seamless gradient. You have learned how line direction affects the shadows. You have practiced applying radial, linear, and triangular shading. You learned how to shade objects that are empty and how to adjust the shading of basic geometric shapes to real objects. You have learned about how light works on objects with edges and you also practice shading complex objects. Finally, you have learned about the best color choices when it comes to shading and applied all these to a cute illustration of an ice cream. If there's one thing I hope you will take away from this class is that shading is not just important, but fun and when it is done with confidence, your results will be incredible. Now, that you've had a chance to learn by doing and practiced the concepts along with the explanation, I am sure we created this table based in you that you will be able to rely on in the future and you will be able to build on it. I'm really excited to see your projects, so don't forget to post them into the project gallery. It would be also a great idea to see what your fellow peers have accomplished. Like them and comment on them. I usually choose the best projects and share them on my Facebook page, so don't miss the chance to get featured. It would be really nice to know what you think about the class. Please leave me a review and don't forget to follow me here on Skillshare so that you get notified about my latest announcements, new classes, and challenges. It was a pleasure to have you in this class, happy creating and see you next time.