Swamper

[djtrousdale]

Pretty cool! :thumbsup:

[bkboggy]

My biggest issue is that my blending isn't working out. What I mean by that is that if you look at most of people's drawings, they're solid. As in the colors come out nicely without much bluring. Mine comes out blury when I try to blend colors. Or not strong enough.. too blured out. Right now it's kind of flat... Anybody got any techniques?

[switchstance]

using a mouse for drawing is hard, you've done good work here! :thumbsup:
i've put together a little guide how i usually shade my stuff:
(this technique doesn't use pressure sensitivity of a tablet so it can be done with a mouse too! :) )

(red arrows= stroke direction, white lines = what strokes to do)

step1:
Draw the base colour of the object (basically the silhouette)
with 100% opacity and a sharp edged brush.

step2:
Pick the colour of the light you want to illuminate the object with.
Set the opacity to somewhere around 15-35% and again use a shard edged brush.
Now draw from one end of the illuminated surface to the other and repeat it.
With every stroke you go less far, until you end up with a very bright spot at the place
where the light is hitting the surface the hardest! (See strokes #1-4)
This spot could also be somewhere in the middle, depending on where the light is coming from and what kind of object you have.

At the end of this step you have a gradient, but not yet a soft and blended one...

step3:
Again use a sharp edged brush with about 15-35%, preferably nearer to 15, because we want to blend after all :)
Pick the colour of one colourstep in the gradient and use this colour to do one or multiple strokes over the NEXT step (exactly over the line where two colours meet)
Stop when you see that the step you are working on has blended together.
Repeat this step at any place where you still have visible steps in colour, and
continously lower your brush size and opacity to get more steps in the gradient.

If you do this often enough, (and you can do this quite fast when you get used to it)
you get a blended smoothly lit surface, that doesn't have this over-blurred effect to it!

step4:
This is an optional step, however, quite often a very important step.
Pick the light colour and move a good bit near white in the colour selector (depends on how bright you want your light to be)
Now place some highlights at the brightest spot.
Don't blend those too much afterwards, but blend them if you think they are too sharp :)

good luck with shading!

http://mitglied.lycos.de/therealshit/shadingguide.jpg

[bkboggy]

Nice, that's exactly what I needed. Thank you very much. I'll use that technique and I'll post and update soon.

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