Shading - Working Around with Backgrounds

Title: Hot Air Balloon
Medium: Pencil / Colored  Pencil on Paper
Artist: Yet Diago

The materials I used on the illustration above is an ordinary drawing pencil, a cheap sketchpad and colored pencils. Though pencil drawing is the most basic and inexpensive medium, you can still create realistic drawings using a variety of techniques. Basically, shading is a skill that anybody can learn. Understanding how the light works and learning how to control your pencil will bring life and depth to your drawings.

To help you understand how I created this hot air balloon drawing, let me give you a step by step illustration. First, I outlined  the subject and worked on the dark areas. I marked all areas that should be in shadows and started shading them. 

To help me decide how dark is dark on the subject, I moved towards the background. I worked around these areas repeatedly until I achieved the desired tone.

The next illustration shows that I worked my way around the sketchpad and marked other areas that I would touch later. A great deal of drawing is all about comparison. Do not focus much yet on the main subject but also give equal attention to other areas for comparison. It is much easier to correct them as you go along.

Once satisfied with what you have in your sketchpad, you can start shading all of them from dark to light. By improving your shading, you can greatly improve the quality of your drawings.

On the final stage and as a finishing, I decided to shade some areas with colored pencils; blending the colors with the shade of  the ordinary pencil.

For those who are focused and determined, shading is not really difficult to learn. At a glance, you may say that a person who is devoid of  talent and skill cannot accomplish so much but if only you would allow yourself, drawing and shading only requires a lot of practice and tons of patience.