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an egg. |
Let's do some shading! Grab an egg out of your refrigerator and set it in front of you. Of course it should be
on a flat surface so the egg doesn't roll and break. If you
don't like eggs, or haven't been to the store lately, you can
use the egg on this page. But it would be better if you had
your own egg, because drawing real-life objects is always
better and easier than drawing from photographs.
 Tape
or clip a few sheets of paper horizontally onto your drawing desk.
With your pencil draw the egg shape in the middle
and slightly to the right of the paper. As you look at the egg
on the table, where is the light source coming from that is casting the
shadow on the egg? What is the quality of the light - is it a
hard light that makes real sharp shadows or is it a soft light
that will create softer, more gradual, shadows? In the egg
photo on this page, the light is a soft light source. But you
knew that, right? Make a small dot on your paper in the area
of where your light source is. This is to remind you where your light source is coming from.
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How to shade an egg. |
Now we're going to shade the sphere (actually, it's probably
more oval). Look at the egg and note the shadows. Do you see the
shadows, the midtones and the highlights? If not, click HERE to see a
diagram of the tones of this egg. The highlight may be pretty diffuse because an egg isn't a
completely smooth and shiny surface. Start by lightly shading
the entire egg, graying it. Try and use long strokes that go
from one edge to the other. If you use a bunch of short
strokes, you'll probably get many different tones rather than
one smooth one. This is your midtone.
As you
look at the shadow on the egg do you see a sliver of light
down near the base of the egg? That's some reflected light from the table
bouncing back onto the egg. If you have a dark desk you may not see this reflected light because a dark table isn't going to reflect light.
To draw this spot of reflected light just don't shade so hard
in that area.
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The "shadow shapes" on the
egg. |
An easy way to create shading is to look for the shapes that
the shadows and highlights create, then draw these shapes as
toned areas on your drawing. What I mean is this: on the egg,
the highlight creates a pretty round shape, and the major
shadow creates a sort of a crescent shape. Look for these
shadow shapes, and since they don't really remind your logical
mind of anything, they should be fairly easy to draw. I
wouldn't recommend actually drawing these shadow shapes, like
I did in the example, but just look for them and try and
mentally see them on your drawing. Now, go ahead and shade in the shadow on the egg. Your shadow should be slightly curved to wrap around the spherical shape of the egg. You don't even have to pick up your pencil, just keep the movement going but let up on the pressure on the pencil to get a lighter shade for
midtone and press harder for shadow. Now where
you see the highlight on the egg, take your eraser and erase
out that spot on your drawing. There's your highlight. Now, to
make it very realistic, draw the cast shadow. Lightly draw the
contour
of the cast shadow, then lightly shade it in with a
pretty even tone. That's pretty easy, huh? That's all shading is: quick back and forth movements laying down different
amounts of graphite depending on what tone you want to
acheive.
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