How to Shade (5 Shading Techniques)
Main types of shading mg src: CreativeBloq
A shade is a transition from dark to light or light to dark.
Without shades drawings will be dull and lack detail. They make a drawing come to life (as it is seen).
Practice is everything if you want to achieve perfect and consistent shades. Always draw and scribble down a pencil or pen on a paper on a regular basis.
Find and draw objects with dark and light areas and corners such as keys to improve your shading.
Keep at least two B pencils, one dark, e.g 8B and one light (2B) or keep one like 5B (which is both dark and light).
The types of shades we will describe here are more suitable with pencils, pens or chalks. Although you can still apply them to Paintings as well.
Hatching
Hatching is a simple type of shade which involves horizontal or vertical lines. Darker areas will have closely packed or spaced lines while lines are widely spaced in light areas.
Hatching can be suitable for any texture or tone.
Cross Hatching
This is hatching but with both horizontal and vertical lines together.
If you want more darkness and closely packed lines then cross hatching is more ideal. It is also quick to achieve your level of darkness.
Cross hatching is widely used and can be suitable for many textures like clothes, buildings, tree trunks and more. It is also used in cartoon animations and diagrams in textbooks.
Scribbling
Scribbling involves scribbles (or circles) without a defined pattern
It is mostly suitable for hair especially curled hair, but can also be used in other textures such as carpets.
There is a variation of scribbling called circling which involves well defined and packed circles.
Pointlism
Pointlism also known as stippling or dotting is a shading technique which involves, well, “dots”. Darker areas have closely packed and vivid dots while widely spaced and light dots for light areas.
Pointlism is more suitable to illustrate beard or even hair. You can also use it to shade fruits like oranges.
Analyse the different shading techniques: Img src, CreativeCourses
Conclusion
When shading some artists like to apply their fingers to achieve a consistent tone and remove any remaining whitespace.
However, as you perfect and master your shades you’ll find it unnecessary to use fingers.
Pro Tip: Try to draw and shade with a pen
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