Its been almost a month and half that I have been working on my sketching and drawing skills. At the start, I was all about drawing and sketching only. I did not pay much attention to the shading part because at that time, I did not know how important is shading for making drawings look more beautiful and realistic.
Now after sketching for a month and half, I noticed that shading is a very important part of art of sketching. Shading can bring weight to your drawings and sketches. At first, I only wanted to sketch and draw things as I see them. Most of my old sketches and drawings as I see them now, I consider them incomplete. They look good but they don't feel to be realistic or eye catching because they are missing a very important part of them i.e, shading.
Shading makes drawings and sketches to look even more pleasing to the eyes. Sometimes our sketches does not look good because either we have not shaded them or did a very little bit of shading work on them.
At the very starting days, my sketches were not so good and I thought that it will get better and better with time which is right, but I could have made them look better with a bit of shading them.
This time I made a sketch of a cute little puppy and I took pictures of it at different stages of it which I will share with you guys to make you understand that a little bit of refining can make a huge difference in how your sketches and drawings may look. So here it is,
Step 1 :
The very first step is to draw the outlines of what you are sketching. This is one of the most important stage of sketching in which you will make sure to draw every part of your sketch in equal proportions to each other.
This step is the base of the sketch. Good base means good final results. And everyone knows how important it is to have a solid base in order to construct a strong structure or building.
Step 2 :
In this picture, you can see with a bit of refining work the sketch is looking better as compared to first picture. A little shading work is done too which helps it to look better but still not complete.
Step 3 :
In this picture, 50% of the shading is almost done and it looks much much better than the second picture. You can see with every bit of shading the sketch is evolving a lot.
When I took this picture, I thought I am done with my sketch(as you can see I wrote the name as well) but something was striking at the corner of my head, giving me a feel that it is still not complete and after reviewing it for some minutes, I realized something is still missing. So, I did a little bit of more shading work on it and I saw huge difference when I compared both pictures.
Final Step :
By comparing all the pictures, I was amazed and confused as well that how every little effort I did on it changed the overall look of it so much. And after seeing the final results I can say it is worth the time I put into this sketch. So, here is the final picture,
Taking pictures of sketches and drawings after every stage of development is a good way to notice the improvement in them after every step. And don't neglect the shading part and make your drawings and sketches look better and more realistic by performing a little bit of shading work on them. As we all know with a bit of refining process done on Carbon, can transform it into Diamond. So we can also transform our Carbon looking drawings and sketches into Diamonds and Gems by doing a little bit of refining and shading work on them.
I hope you understand my point regarding importance of shading.