How to Add Shading to Faces

So it's a nice stage of a drawing when you can draw several things at once and you can move across from one thing to another .

So you start with an eye or an eyebrow and then move across to the hair and then go back to the eye or the other so you can move across and start to unify and work out how one part of the drawing fits in with another part of the drawing .

So again , darkening the eyes to fit with the eyebrow and the slightly darker hair that I just drew , And then you can start to intuitively see and notice things that will work better in your drawing .

So at this stage , I'll speed up the video so that you can see how all the elements start to hopefully come together .

And the tone in the hair can create quite a illusion of texture on the paper , which will contrast to make the face seem smoother if we have some higher contrast of tone in the hair .

So some of the hair is in strands almost like spaghetti going through .

And sometimes I draw perhaps too many lines for the individual strands of hair .

But then , over the top of that , you can block it in with some mid to sort of tone , which isn't really light or really dark .

And then that can create quite a good effect of hair .

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Now , I gotta say , um this is based on a sort of conventional lighting scheme , the light coming a little bit from above uh the face , uh when you change the lighting scheme , of course , the location of the shading also changes .

So uh you can't really regard this as , you know , you should always shade every face like this , you know .

Uh this is just one sort of typical uh shading scheme um that , that you see under what I would say , sort of average lighting conditions .

But what's interesting is that the most of the darkness tends to sort of pull up right in this area over here .

Uh In this case to the left , uh the upper left area of the eye and then this region where um the um the the flesh between the eyelid and the eyebrow sort of folds up .

I think it kind of tends to curve a little in most people , uh , in the structure of most faces so that we get some shading here , uh , below .

But you don't darken all of this area up here .

It's like some light is able to reach that area much more than , uh , over here .

And , um , some people , depending on the structure of your face , you're gonna get a little bit of shading even here just near , um , you know , between the two eyebrows above the nose itself , you might get a little bit of shading here .

And what I'm probably gonna do is just time lapse through the repetition of shading this eye in the same way .

So let's consider this just the , you know , the , the real time of one of the eyes and then we'll do the whole rest of the other one .

time lapse .

Now , another area where you're gonna see some shading is below the eye .

And I'm slowing down here because I have to really kind of carefully add my approach is to sort of do slow small circular motions of the tip of the pencil to gradually build up a little bit of shade right here .

And again , depending on the person , some people have , uh , eyes , uh , that , uh , have quite a substantial structure down here and cast a fairly substantial uh shadows .

So , so much of this sort of depends on lighting conditions the actual face , the facial structure of the person uh that you're drawing .

But um I thought it might be interesting to at least have one video that focuses completely on shading rather than on all that other stuff of uh of actually drawing the face .

Now , I've come over here and in this case , she's got hair that is kind of casting uh a bit of a , a shadow and that becomes a slightly different thing .

Um If her hair were pulled back from her face , I don't think you'd see nearly so much shading , uh , over here .

So I guess that probably does that for the real time , uh , of this part of shading in the eyes .

Um You might get a little shade on the actual eyeball itself , uh generally toward the top of it .

Um , when you get into a really detailed drawing of the human face , that's where you'll start to get into details like this with shadow shadows falling upon the actual eyeball .

But let's go ahead and , uh , I'm gonna do the rest of this other eye and time lapse .

You may see , see me add a little more shading here , then we'll come back to talk about shading in the nose .

All right .

So we've got the good basics of some shading going on here .

And , uh , as I draw the nose , we may refine this area at the bridge of the nose a little more .

Uh , but I think it's time for me to shift focus down to the nose and , uh , continue adding shading .

Ok .

So I'm gonna jump in here at the bottom , uh , where I think is the primary , uh , area of the shading and , uh , start adding some here at the base of the nose .

Uh , now , uh , again , depending on the lighting situation , you're gonna get , uh , drastically different , uh , types of shading down here .

And if the , there's quite a lot of light sort of splashing onto the face from straight ahead , sometimes the nose almost um vanishes a little in terms of um how much its form is revealed by way of shading .

I've decided though , to uh at least give you some uh fair amount of structure of the nose revealed .

And um , I , if I imagine this light as coming primarily from one side or the other , I'm gonna think of it as coming a little more from the left just to touch more from the left .

And that means that uh this tip of the nose gets a little more heavily shaded uh over here on the right hand side .

Now , as we move up toward um the bridge of the nose , this is where the shading really needs to get quite subtle and , and uh I'm gonna try to do this real time , but uh I think it really does require an awful lot of gradual sort of incremental build up uh of shading to do this properly .

So toward the end , I may have to resort to a little bit of time lapse lest .

I put everyone to sleep by way of this spirit .

But you can see even in this , uh , amount of time I've , I've managed to build up something there .

Sometimes people will put just a little hint of shade above the tip of the nose to emphasize , uh , the , the structure there .

And then down here , this is where I'm always very careful not to um darken in the nostrils too much and also not to delineate the sort of edge of the nostril too much because it does tend to very quickly look , um , sort of pig nosed or just calling too much attention .

And I think very often we're , we're trying to limit the amount of , you know , we don't want the person looking at the drawing to have their eye pulled too much uh toward the nose .

You don't want to call too much attention to it , but you can see me adding a fair amount of shading here uh below the tip of the nose .

And , and because I said the light is coming a little more , um from the left hand side , um building things up a bit more uh over here on the right .

Um But that doesn't mean that I can't add any shading at all over here on the left .

I just keep it a little more subtle .

And uh in terms of uh the amount of shading that goes beneath the nose .

Um , again , depending on the lighting situation .

I think you're inevitably going to see a fair amount here right below the tip of the nose in a conventional sort of lighting situation .

But I wouldn't , um , go into too much , uh , shading over here on the , below the nostrils .

I don't think there's any need for enormous amounts of shading down there .

So , yeah , let me , uh , give myself a little bit of time lapse .

You know , I love my time lapse , little old man , time laps come in here to rescue me and I'm gonna add , um , you know , to sort of finish off my shading , uh , throughout this whole area of the notes .

All right .

Well , I think that just about does it for the area of the nose , it's time to shift focus down to the mouth .

And I think we'll be able to still keep the nose in frame as we sort of join these two areas together .

All right .

Now , one of the first things I'm gonna do is sort of lighten up this , uh , line , uh , delineating the upper lip .

So as to allow myself to really define it mainly by the shading rather than by some harsh line .

And what's interesting to me as I study photos and different things , um , uh , relating to drawing the face , this upper lip is not uniform in terms of its , um , shade .

Um , certainly if it's being lit a , a bit from above .

Um , I'm putting in a sort of a uniform base layer of a , of a light uh shade .

But what happens , uh , a lot of the time is that , um , the darkness sort of , um , forms over here towards the left , the lower left and lower , right hand side and I think it maybe has something to do with the curvature of the lip that as it curves , uh the upper section is ge catches a little bit of light from above and doesn't , doesn't need to be so deeply shaded .

Uh Now , different people have different levels of texture uh in their upper lips .

And I'm gonna go ahead and put in a little bit of line work here to sort of represent those wrinkles that sometimes uh form on the looks just a little bit of a , a added detail .

But primarily I wanted to focus on how uh dark it gets down here at the edges as we reach to the sort of corner uh corners of the lips .

And this area also sort of , you want to build up um a fair amount of darkness , there tends to be an area where the , the light just cannot reach .

And um in terms of the area between the upper lip and the nose , uh I find it best to sort of leave that area alone and not attempt to um put in too much detail .

Uh Of course , we all know that there's uh there's quite a defined structure there , uh , in some people that do a , a , as you try to render that in line work or shading , sort of , like I was saying , with the nostrils or maybe the bridge of the nose that you end up calling a little too much attention to it I find .

And so I'm just gonna leave that sort of to the imagination almost .

Now , we get down to the area of the uh lower lip .

And what's interesting to me is that um the shadow tends to form quite deeply right below , immediately below the lower lip .

Um Again , depending on the structure of the person's face and then it the shading the shadow dissipates uh quite quickly , but certainly in this area right below , depending on the lighting situation , you can get quite a deep uh area of shadow .

And then for the lip itself , I'm gonna go ahead and put a sort of a base layer .

I like this area on the left and the right to be um defined mainly by way of color and not by line or deep shade .

Um So you're seeing me again , uh going keeping the pencil very low at a low angle to the page and trying to get this um area of the lower lip indicated in as subtle a way as I can .

Now , what happens uh in some lighting situations is there is a bit of shadow here in the upper area of the lower lip .

I think I need to sort of , uh , decide what we're doing here with the interior of the mouth .

I'm gonna go ahead and do some line work there real quick .

Um , I suppose we might see a hint of the teeth , but again , I don't want to call too much attention to the teeth , so I may even erased that back away a little bit very often .

It's only these two front teeth that become quite clear and you get a little bit of sha uh shadow , in fact , yeah , I don't like seeing any , even , even the as little of a line as there was .

To me , that's almost too much .

I don't like to , to see the individual lines of the teeth so much over .

Indeed , many artists will just make a solid white area there .

Um It's a very common uh illustration technique .

But uh again , yeah , the , the uh this is not a solid area of shade it .

Uh it sort of , you get some darkness down here at the base .

Like I said , it's sort of a strip of darkness up here and sometimes maybe this uh the upper lip is casting a little bit of a shadow upon the lower lip .

So you get a little bit of shading in there .

But like I said , this area right here on the left and the right .

I don't like to darken it in too much , but I might go because of the lighting situation being a little coming from the left , I might delineate things a little bit more over here .

Uh , on this one side , in fact , get a little bit of shading all the way around there .

And one thing , uh , that becomes very helpful I think is to start focusing on this whole area outside of the lip , um , this sort of pouty area where , um , the muscles can sort of pull down on the mouth and again , different uh people have a different structure here .

Some men and women have a quite pronounced um area here to the left and right , sort of lower area surrounding the lips .

Uh If you just leave that completely blank , um you're maybe selling yourself short a little bit because this uh adding in shading in this whole area can really um add a whole new feeling of structure of how the face sort of supports uh the lips in this area .

I'm not gonna do too much shading uh down here as we go around the chin , but I think we can get some shading over here .

That sort of echoes this area .

Again , we've got a sort of a left right disparity here with the , the right hand side is more heavily shadowed than the uh left hand side .

Did I get that right , right hand side , left hand side , one of the sides is more deeply shaded , but that doesn't mean that there's that there's no shading at all over here .

And that's why I'm going back and , and sort of deepening the shade a bit .

And I believe that it is gonna bring us pretty close to the end of this video .

One thing I want to do is sort of refocus so that you can see the entire face as I bring out my trusty black prisma color , a simple black colored pencil that will allow me to deepen the dark areas darker still .

Uh My little technique , I call it the two pencil method of combining a simple graphite pencil .

Uh like this one , a Dixon Taco Rogo with a black colored pencil .

And it really helps .

I think you'll see .

I'm gonna do this all in time lapse , but you're gonna see me adding um final shading and darkening things in to uh finish off the drawing and then I'll be back with a few final words .

All right .

Well , you can see , I put an awful lot of time in there at the end all in time lapse .

Uh building up the shading here and there throughout the drawing .

I'd say patience is the key really uh with shading , don't rush it , take your time , build these things up little by little .

Uh until you've got a good balance of lights and darks throughout your drawing .

I did add a little bit of white and opaque uh uh paint there to get highlights into the eyes and a little bit on the lips .

And nose .

Um But otherwise , I think it's time for me to say thank you to anyone who has supported me by getting any of my books like the Realism challenge , my book on hyper realistic illustrations .

We've also got the two pencil method that I mentioned uh in this video .

And indeed , I used it used that method to do this drawing and of course , there's always mastering manga .

I really cannot say thank you enough to those of you who choose to support me by getting any of those books .

But let's go ahead and lay down this pencil .

I wanna thank you all for watching this video .

I really hope you liked it and I'll be back with another one real soon .