So you sorta have an idea of where the shading is supposed to go. But you’re wondering, what are the best ways to get the shading on to my character. Luckily there’s a ton of ways to shade a character and you can try out all of them until you find a method that’s right for you!

The technique you use is partially based off your tools of the trade. Thus, this guide is going to be categorized based on what tool you are planning on using. The only tool I haven’t used for shading is pen. Based on the guide found here, shading is done similar to with a pen, though you can’t really smudge pen or use some of the other neat techniques that you can use with pencils.

Digital

Digital has a lot of techniques that can be used to shade, so I’m not going to cover all of them here. The best digital art program is Adobe Photoshop, though there are a bunch of other options like Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 Ultimate, Paint.net and GIMP.

Cell Style:

Cell style involves creating polygons filled with color. These polygons have hard edges and can be created much faster than any other kind of shading. Pick areas where you want to shade and then decide whether or not you want to use the lasso tool, pen tool or a brush.

Lasso tool:

The default lasso tool allows you to drag the mouse and draw out the selection. How the selection works is that you will basically draw out the outline of the area where you’d like to shade. You have to have good hand-eye coordination for this one, but there is also a polygonal lasso that allows you to lasso very fine lines. The only problem with the polygonal lasso tool is that you cannot create curving selections.

Pen tool:

The pen tool takes slightly longer to use than the lasso tool, but you can create perfect curves. How the pen tool works is that you create things called vectors wherever you click. Lines travel from one vector to another. When you click to create a new vector, you can click, hold and drag and a curve will be created that can be manipulated by how you drag your mouse. It’s really hard to explain but you’ll see what I mean if you try it. The pen tool’s kinda rare, but you can find it on Photoshop and GIMP.

Paint bucket:

The paint bucket is the simplest tool to use. Just click within the selection and the selection will be filled with the color you choose.

Brush tool:

The brush tool requires a steady hand. You can use the brush tool with a mouse or a tablet. Tablets are tools where you use a special pen called a stylus to draw on the tablet. Then whatever you draw appears on the Photoshop. This tool does take time to get used to, but it’s much more natural than using the mouse. Still, if you take time to master drawing using a mouse, you will be able to create art that’s just as good as art created using any other tool.

You can use all the same techniques with the brush tool that you would use with a pencil, pen or marker. You can even smudge the shading just like you would with a blending stick, tissue or your finger by using the smudge tool. Or if you want a more even and gradual blending, you can use any one of the blur filters or the blur tool. The blur tool is on the toolbar and allows you to blur wherever you click and drag your mouse. With the filters, if you want to blur all of your shading in one fell swoop, place your shading on a separate layer and run one of the filters. My favorite filter is Gaussian blur. If you want to blur a specific section, you can use the selection tools above.

Pencil

Techniques:

Like described above, most of the techniques for using a pencil are the same as using a pen. There’s the contour method, where the lines follow the edges of the part of the body or object you are drawing. There is crosshatching where contour lines cross over each other. You can also shade by placing several lines close together with the lines getting closer and closer together as you get farther from the light source. The stipling method uses lots of dots with the dots farther from the light source being closer together than the dots closer to the light source. Crosscrossing is just that, lines that crisscross getting closer and closer as you get farther away from the light source. Finally, like mentioned earlier, there’s a unique method only possible with a pencil. You can push harder or lighter with the pencil, pushing lighter the closer you get to the light source. You can also use different artist pencils with different lead weights.

Blending:

You can definitely leave the shading alone if you like how it looks. But if you want a more natural shading, you can try to smudge all of the shading together in order to create a very gradual shading effect. Skinny blending sticks are useful in smudging very small areas of the picture, while the tissue can be used if you don’t want to run off to an art store. You can also use your finger if you do not mind getting some pencil lead on your finger.

Markers

I guess markers can shade the same way as pencils, but I prefer the cell-style shading for markers. The best markers to use for art are Copic markers. In order to get straight edges, you can use a ruler and create the polygon edges before filling them in with the marker.

I hope all of this was useful. Shading will completely transform your picture and make it pop out in complete 3Dness.