Shading Technique

[jehuty]

hallo,

i am wondering if there are tutorials out there where you learn... well different techniques of shading a picture... but i mean not where to but shadow and light... is more like how to draw the shading in photoshop... how do i get a real good gradiant made with a airbrush or brush in PS??? how do i make it look real... that's what i am interested in?! can somebody help?

thx
jehuty

[KDR_11k]

I think that's explained in "Drawing on the right side of the brain", which is what the majority of people here will recommend you for learning basic drawing techniques.

[anubis2k4]

im not an expert but to make it look real you have to stop useing lines and use shadeing to make the shape

[lkraan]

There are good video tutorials on the polycount site.
They don't really show what "brush" to use but it shows the whole process how to get from a blank image to a cool skin.

[jehuty]

ok, i have all this videos from polycount but i don't get how they do a nice smooth shading over, for example the face or muscles... i mean i wanna stick with the way to first make a greyscale texture on one layer and add color behind that and then make a overlay... i guess for cloth that will work but i don't know if that works for faces... i am new to that technique and my major problem is to make a real smooth looking shading/gradiant for heights and depths... so that's what i am asking for... how do you guys make it look smooth?

[MoP]

if you're using a mouse it's gonna be a lot harder than using a pressure-sensitive graphics tablet with a pen, because the pressure sensitivity can be set up to change the "opacity" of brushes, so you can paint over an area a few times, building up the value by a small amount at a time.

a good way to blend shading is to use the Blur or Smudge tools (not the filter blur, the brush-type blur, under the same tool as Smudge) - that will blend the areas of shading to fade into each other. It's probably good to do a rough gradient, then Smudge or Blur those shades together, then paint over again, picking colours from the previous blurred area, and then do another smudge/blur, since that will make a more consistent and smooth gradient.

that's the way i usually do it.

[jehuty]

yeah MoP... that's what i am talking about... thank you very, very much... and no problem /images/graemlins/wink.gif i have a Intuos 2 6x8 wacom tablet... i worked with that allready and i'll never miss it again...! /images/graemlins/laugh.gif
so... are there some other techniques or are all doing it the same way? i am very iterested to learn more about this...

[KMan]

Also try different paint modes besides 'normal'. Overlay and Hard Light work particularly well in many instances.

Although that's probably only if you prefer to do the majority of your work in color, as opposed to doing it in grayscale. Even if I don't know what color I want to go with, I'll at least work in warm and cool grey tones.

[MoP]

Kman, that's a great idea... i shall try that! warm and cool greys, eh... who'da thunk it!

[jehuty]

well KMan you mean like redgrey and bluegrey... for example?
KMan can you plz go into a little detail about that... would be very kind!
thx

[killingpeople]

i created something that addresses just what you are asking about.
a photoshop demo thread i created at conceptart.org a while ago. (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=18980)

[jehuty]

jesus christ... killing.people this is just awesome... i knee in front of you, man!
or are you also a "chick"? *just.kidding* /images/graemlins/wink.gif
no, this is really what i was looking for... cool... i see a lot of work to do... /images/graemlins/grin.gif... for me!!! /images/graemlins/laugh.gif

[KDR_11k]

Nice! Only thing you forgot was that pressing 0 will set your opacity to 100%.