How to Shade a Cylinder: Beginning Drawing Techniques

Video Transcript

Hi! My name is Peggy Robertson and on behalf of Expert Village.com, I am going to show you the art of shading. Shading is what actually defines and makes a cylinder or a circle pop out and become three-dimensional and alive. Now since shading is easier shown than described, I am going to do so, so let us go find some shadows. Okay so we are all set up and we have got everything ready to go. I am going to be showing you some basic shadow techniques for a cylinder and also for a circle. Let’s get started. Now you notice on a can it is darker on this side because this is the way the shadow is going. The light is coming in from this side, so we have a light spot here but it is also darker there. Now you notice the lines go round, they do not go straight across, they curve. So what I am going to do is when we shade, we are going to curve our lines too. We are going to come in, but it is a little better, and we are going to aim. Here is the center, this is the where the bright spot is, right here, so we are going to just bring our curve in, but it is going to get lighter when it gets toward that bright spot; it is going to be darker at the edge, lighter in the center. This is like I said before really fast way to do shadow. You want to get darker at this edge right here, because that is the dark edge. You see how the can is going from being flat, being three-dimensional just by using the shading techniques, you can do a little dark at the top, you can come in here, do a little line along here that will give in three-dimensional drop at the top of the can. Then we do one from this side and we come in, because right at the edge, it is dark and then it lightens up, if you go over the center do not worry about it, this is really nice, I am using a very soft pencil, I am using a 4B. If I want I can actually come and smear some of this to get rid of those lines and give it more of a smoother effect, and then you just keep it going to it; There is a little shadow here, there is a little lip shadow up here, pick up a little lip shadow down here to have it done there here. The shadow doesn’t start at the corner. You know the shadow starts earlier, comes out and then it kind of takes off. We are going to miss the ball so we do not mess that up and depending on how strong you want your light source to be, will depend on how far we go from the shadow. Now the shadow would come from the other side about here, so we will continue it out this way and we will just cut it short right here and that you would do. You know it is really dark right here, so you want to do a darker shadow right here, darker shadow line and then it kind of fades off as it gets out farther, so you have it darker up against the can. There is a dark edge on the can and then we get the dark shadow there. Then once again, it gets lighter the farther out it goes.

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