One Color, Many Shades

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Hi, and welcome to the first blog post here on One Color, Many Shades. This blog is about how to shade with just one color.

I’ll be using this site as a place to put my thoughts on pencil shading techniques that I’ve developed over many years of dabbling with drawing. My intention is that these tips will help you out if you’re trying to draw in shades of gray or doing gray-scale art.

This isn’t a tutorial site where I’ll be showing you step by step how to do a portrait or landscape drawing. Instead, I’m going to share a bunch of ways that I’ve figured out for making the process easier for myself and for making my drawings look more realistic.

**I’ll try to keep the posts short and sweet, so there won’t be much introductory information here. If you have any questions about anything I post, please leave me a note in the comments section below and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible!**

No artist likes to be told how to draw, but I’ve found that most artists are also interested in learning new techniques. To share some of my own techniques for shading with other artists, I’ve put together this blog.

Shading is the process of adding values (lights and darks) to a drawing. It is the way that an artist can create the illusion of form or dimension in a flat drawing. Often it is the only difference between a flat cartoon and a realistic looking drawing.

How much light falls on each part of the subject will determine how light or dark its value should be. Darker light is reflected less off the object’s surface, so it looks closer to the object’s true color (a basic truth of physics). The more light that falls on an area, the lighter its value will be.

I use different methods for different media: colored pencils, markers, watercolors, airbrush and oils. But all my methods rely upon one simple principle: slowly building up layers of gradually darker values using transparent colors. This method allows me to achieve many different shades with just four or five colors from my palette.*

Shading is an art used to describe the three-dimensional appearance of a surface. It uses gradations of light and dark to reflect a sense of depth, volume, mass or solidity. In other words, shading gives the illusion of form and volume to a two-dimensional work of art such as a drawing or painting.

Tone and texture can also be added by using colors other than black to shade a work of art. This can make your two-dimensional image look more three-dimensional. It can also give your drawing or painting more depth and dimension.

Tones come from the colors you use in your drawing or painting to shade it. If you like, you can choose to use one color for this purpose. Artists such as Michelangelo used only black in their works of art. On the other hand, artists such as Henri Matisse preferred to use different colors for different parts of their works of art so that it would have more effect when seen in person rather than in photographs.

In drawings and paintings done with pencils, shading can be done by using different kinds of strokes such as hatching, cross-hatching and stippling among others.*

Even though I’m an artist and a teacher, I still sometimes have trouble shading. I’ve found that there are two reasons for this: one is that pencils don’t usually come in enough shades of gray. The other is that it’s hard to see where the various shades of gray should go.

Shading with Pencils (Part 1): BLOCKING IN THE SHADOWS WITH A 4H BLOCKING IN THE SHADOWS WITH A 4H

Line drawing with the side of a 2H pencil Line drawing with the side of a 2H pencil

Line drawing with the tip of a 2H pencil Line drawing with the tip of a 2H pencil

Shading with Pencils (Part 1): VALUE STUDIES VALUE STUDIES

Shade 1 Shade 1

Shade 2 Shade 2

Shade 3 Shade 3

Shade 4 Shade 4

In drawing, shading is used to show form and create the illusion of depth. Shading can be done quickly with a pencil by using hatching, which is basically drawing many lines that go in the same direction. You can also create shadows by using cross-hatching, which consists of lines that go in different directions.

Shading can also be done in more detail using value scales. A value scale is a series of different values that you use to get the desired shading effect. There are three fundamental ways to use value scales: creating gradients, creating contours, and creating halftones.

Each tool has its strengths and weaknesses. Grades are good for gradual changes from one tone to another but not for sharp transitions. Contours are great for showing detail but can’t be used for gradual changes like grades. Halftones are good for making an area look like a particular texture or surface. But they aren’t good for showing a lot of detail.

All three types of scales work well when used together in different areas on your drawing so that you don’t get too repetitive or boring looking shading patterns.*

Basically, if you are drawing something that is flat, there is no need to outline the edges. The shading will do it for you. If you are drawing a sphere, then the shading will be kind of dull and flat. You want to add some depth by defining the contours of the sphere with a line.

Once you have decided whether or not you want to define the object’s shape with a line, you can decide how thick or thin that outline should be. I like using really thin lines when I am shading because it makes the finished product look more realistic. Once you have defined the shape, you can focus on shading within that shape instead of just darkening wherever the pencil has touched.

Light and shadow are the backbone of drawing theory. Artists have long believed that a drawing is not finished until it is properly lighted and shaded. Accomplished artists spend much time studying light to achieve a convincing illusion of three-dimensionality on their canvases.

The masters’ studies of light and shadow are particularly valuable because they were often done in only one color, using grays and blacks. The absence of color in these drawings makes them all the more interesting, as the artist’s skill at creating form is given an extra challenge. The following pages will demonstrate just how effective this technique can be in creating realistic drawings with only minimal use of color.

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