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I am a man who can NOT draw shadows.

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Gdog4evr:
So, I've recently taken up drawing, nothing major just some doodling (though I've mostly stopped doing it while in class).  I'd possibly consider making some form of comic when my level of skill progressed beyond "ass".  

But, in continuing with the experimentation, I tried some techniques I'd read about for doing a web comic,  to see if I could pull off anything nifty.  I have decided the hardest thing to do is shadows.

Take, for instance, the following:


A fairly odd superhero type character (long story on that one), the first thing you'll notice completly bad about this picture is that his posture dosn't make any sense.  Originally it was really dramatic, like he was out flying and had decided to crash through a window to land on the floor, which seemed really cool at the time.  Unfortunatly, because the trench coat (seemed better than a standard cape) is hanging straight down, it appears he isn't moving in any dramatic fashion at all, like he's just standing there.  Despite this obvious flaw, I continued on for the sake of progress, trying to add shadows.

I now hate doing shadows:



So how do you guys do shadows? Is there any way to figure out how to do it with some kind of precision, or is this another one of those things that just takes a ton of practice?

And, of course, feel free to critique my work, both shadows and in any other way.  I can also post more of my attempts if anyone would be interested.

torg:
well...it doesnt take so much practise. it takes more THINKING and LOOKING...
shade that parts of a character that are turned away from the light source.  so, if your lightsorce is on the right side, shade the left side of your character.  take an arbitrary object and hold it next to a light source and look, what parts are darker... (works best with only one small lightsource in a dark room)
i also suggest looking at some coloring tutorials, usually thge shading is covered there, too.

edit: a quick 2-minute-shading to show you, what i meant...

Hoborg:
Draw some things from real life. Well... draw a lot of things from real life! Seriously, just sketch random objects and stuff you see laying around and pay attention to the way light hits it. Draw some pictures where you draw the shades of an object rather than concentrating on line and shape. You may think 'bah this is boring I want to draw comics' but comics are really just abstract life drawings, and knowing how to draw real things will help you enormously.

bev:
Not much I can add onto what's already been said, but I have had to deal with the same problem. Sometimes I screw it up and don't get it right, but if that happens there are tricks to make it look right, even if it's not realistically right. I guess the problem with your shadow pic is that the shadows don't follow the contures of the human body, and there's clearly not enough. This is about the best pic I've done in a long time and while the shadows are not perfect I did spend a while on them...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v394/dunasmelly/thegangwall.jpg

Don't forget, shadows are only half the problem, remember highlights too. What is reflective, what isn't....

maxusy3k:
Can't really provide advice on the shadow thing, but I thought your superhero guy looked like he was leaning against a wall or something.

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