Muhsin's Shady Session

Hello!  It's me, Muhsin.  I'd like to tell you all a bit about drawing.  For context, I used to draw a lot in middle school, and drew all over my notes and a single art class in high school.  

When it comes to drawing stuff that is not abstract, an important quality is light and shadows.  Including these in your artwork creates a sense of space, showing viewers where an object is in relation to the ground.  

It also gives all the objects in a scene a sort of connection since they are all affected by the same rules of light.  

Also, shading can really give an object definition.

While drawing shadows is not the most difficult part of art, it requires a bit of planning.  First of all, you must create light sources. There are two types, one that is more omnipotent, like the sun, and one that is more regional, like a torch. 

A torch is tricky because you have to pay attention to the shadows being casted at different angles based on location.  However, you have the liberty to plan for a specific light source to emphasize specific parts of your art.

Using a sun for lighting is tricky because a wrong sun angle may force you to shade parts of an object that you may want to emphasize and show detail on.  But it's both simple and easy to draw if planned correctly.  

A difficult part of shading is to know how a light source affects an object so you know how much to shade.  The way I figure it out is visualizing how a real object in three dimensions should look like with such a light angle.  However, this doesn't always work out for me with complicated objects (like people).  I could improve this sense by looking at real-life objects/photos and drawing them, paying close attention to the colors and shading.  Also, as a shortcut, I look at the angle from the light source to the object, and shade the object's opposite side.  

Hopefully this guide helps.  Have a wonderful week!