Create Your OWN Shading Style

Well hi there! I recently made a video about not shading with black, and gave a few other strategies to choose from to boost your art’s appearance. Ultimately how you shade your work can be a big trademark of your own personal style. Style isn’t something you try to create, rather it’s the effects of how you make your art and what you’re interested in. But there are ways to try new things with shading that can help you discover what you like, and I’d like to share some of that with you today.

Heya! Name’s Kanjon and I talk about all of the fulfilling fun of learning to draw and create. It’s a skill that anyone can pick up, at any age, without any special talent. It can be tricky to navigate if you don’t know some of those little simple secrets, and I’ve spent the past couple years documenting them in videos. Get started on my channel homepage and subscribe for some more! In this video, we’re going to talk about some digital tips for building your own shading style, and I’m going to show a little bit more about “hue shifting,” which I mentioned in my previous video. Let’s get started already!

Right here I’ve got this scene I’ve been working on. It’s not done, and honestly there’s more I could do in terms of poses and sketches, but it’s at a point where I want to try some shading. These are my two characters, Kanjon on the left, and Grin off in the distance bein’ all spooky. Yes, I do have a second character! Grin shows up in some video graphics and random pieces of art as this cuddly faceless creature. Here though he’s playing a sort of final boss role in a stereotypical video game concept art setup.

And even though there’s only two main characters to focus on, there’s potentially a lot going on with the light and figuring out how to shade things. We’ve got this bright looking fire on the horizon. There’s implicitly a lot of light in the sky (or at least, background) all over. And I’ve also decided that I want the sword to glow a bit, make it some kind of magical boss-defeating sword type thing.

Buuut we’re going to simplify things for this video, because I’m not trying to describe how all of light theory works. That’s the sort of thing that needs its own study, and I’ve got some recommendations for that in my previous video. Here let’s assume there’s just one main light here. I can start adding in shadows with blue (not black!) and fast-forward along to this sorta setup. Here my character is mostly in shadow, because the light is mostly in front of him. Parts of the sword, his arms, face, and why not, spikes, get some light, but not a lot. He also casts a shadow on the ground. That already looks pretty nice, but let’s keep going.

Those watching closely will see that I’m not using a clip mask when I could be to make this easier. I’m trying to keep this simple on video, but if you want to see more about clip masks, I’ve made a video about that here.

Moving right along, what if we made this shadow the color of the sky instead of blue? Let’s try it. I’m not going to re-paint the shadow with another color; instead I’ll duplicate it and turn the original layer off. Then “alpha lock” this layer, telling my art program to keep the paint that’s already there. I’ll color-pick the sky, and then fill it all with that color. On the layer list we have both versions; pink and blue. And on the canvas, well, I’m liking this a lot. This tone looks really appealing with that sky there, and is going to be a little more accurate to this shadow since most of the light that’s left is coming from the sky.

And hey, we could even play around with this and try more colors by making a hue adjustment. I’ll leave this one alone for now though; let’s try something else with hue! This is going to get a little complicated, so I’ll try to explain each step well. We’re going to use something called a “mask”. Not a clip mask, just a regular mask. In digital art, a mask is used to cover up part of a layer, only showing parts you want to be shown. Here, it’s a grayscale layer that’s sort of “glued” on to another layer, only showing parts that you tell it to. Sort of like masking tape, see the connection? It starts out white, showing all of the layer. If I start with a black mask instead, nothing is shown, but I can paint the mask white and reveal the layer. Oh hey, happy Pride! Pride and art are both deeply rooted in the celebration of self-expression, and I hope you can find a way to celebrate or support in the ways that fit you. Be your best self.

Right, so with a mask, we can kind of “paint with a layer”. We’re going to use that in just a moment. First, I’m going to make a copy of my character here without the lines, flatten that down to one layer. I’m going to open this adjustment panel and tune the hue a little bit this direction. Well, that’s not my character colors now is it? But we’re going to use this as our shadow layer with a mask. That mask is gonna look like one of the shadows I’ve already painted: I made this by turning the shadows white (remember how I made them pink?) and then filling a black rectangle behind it. I’m copying this layer and pasting it right into this mask slot. That did it! I can toggle this mask on and off, and you can see how the hue-shifted shadow switches between covering everything, and covering only the shadow. It did lose the shadow on the ground, but I can still bring back another shadow layer underneath if I want that back.

Again, we made a copy of the character’s colors with the hue shifted, and painted that on as a shadow using a mask. Re-watch that if you need, I know it gets rather involved quickly. This works in any art app that supports masking and blending modes, which is most of them. And if you think through some of the steps, you can see where you might try some other effects. What if you shifted the hue another direction, or tried a different color effect entirely? What about blending modes other than multiply? What if you applied a bit of a texture to your shadow by erasing parts of it, or even going the opposite direction and adding some sparkle?

There’s so much stuff you can do with shadows alone, a lot of you shared your own techniques in the comments of the last video and it’s really cool to see. Keep it up! Playing around with things like this, finding the techniques that you like to use just through experimentation, is a big contributor to finding your style. It’s still something you’ll slowly encounter over time and it’s not something you can force, but you can try new things to find what you like. Anyway, I hope you’ve learned something useful today, or at least found the spark to try something new in your work. I’ve got some art of my own to finish up, because this weekend is Furality and I intend on roaming about for most of the con in VR. If you see me there, come say hi, I love to talk. Also it’s pride month, and the drawing calendar is refreshed for the occasion. Go grab yours for those days when you can’t think of a drawing idea. Chase that passion colorful creature, I’ll see you around.