Art book to prove that you can get better

step 4: Shading and lighting

Shading and lighting are crucial in drawings.

If our shading doesn't match the lighting, our drawing will look weird.

Lighting comes from many angles. Common ones are sides, behind, in front, on top of or below our drawing.

Here's an example of a hand drawn with top lighting:

We see that the shading corresponds with the angle the light is coming from. Reference photos are usually useful in these types of drawings, as we can more easily see where the light hits and how the shadows are formed.

This is an example of front lighting, we see that the TV is sending light over them, and so their shadows must go straight back behind them rather than to the side.

Top side lighting may look like this. The light comes from a corner and descends onto our character.

Here we have dual lighting: Note that the colors of your lighting also have an impact on your drawing, like how we see the blue lighting gives our character a blueish hue and the same for the red.

The coloring of the shadows is also useful, like how shadows for the color white usually have a more blueish look than a grey one, like in the image below:

The teeth are shaded with both blue and grey, and although they cannot be seen very well, the shadows on the coat are a light blue.

I hope these small tips helped you! Don't give up on drawing! I've been drawing for almost 4 years, and from my first free-hand drawing (a pretty messy and sloppy mess of a dragon) I have began creating artworks like these:

I know that if I can go from a sloppy, wiggly and unstructured drawer to this then you can too! It just takes time and practice but you'll get there!

Have a good rest of your day/night and believe in yourself!