Shading Practice
To start to learn how to shade, I started by shading a sphere. I made a grey circle using the shape tool in photoshop and then I created a clipping mask using a new layer which means that I will only be affecting the layer it is attached to which is ideal because we only need to focus on the circle, and it doesn’t ruin anything else.
The layers were set up like this. The arrows pointing down indicate a layer mask which affects the layer it’s pointed at. I made two layers for the circle, one to make the top lighter and one to make the bottom part darker to blend them into each other.
I also had to make a shadow for the sphere so I made another sphere, but used the skew tool to make it more like an oval coming down from the sphere. The darker area is closer to the ball because its a shadow, and the light would be blocked by the sphere.
Once I finished the sphere I wanted to make it unique and I’ve myself a challenge so I decided to turn it into a Pokeball from Pokemon. This meant that because of the red and white design, the base of the ball had to be darker as red is darker than white. A new layer was created to give the line and button design along the middle of the ball that wouldn’t ruin any of the work already done.
Overall I think that the shading came out alright for a first try. to improve on shading I need to work with more complex shapes and different lighting angles to fully understand the way light works on objects. once I get more used to shading and how light works it should become second nature and it will help improve my art.
