Lighting and shading may take up only about 20% of the time you put into a drawing, but they will impact 80% of how that drawing is perceived!
Good lighting and shading can turn a simple doodle into an eye-catchy drawing, can draw the viewer’s eye to certain areas of your artwork and make your colours and artwork pop, really turning an average work into a piece of art!
In this course Maria shows you practical examples using the Procreate app on the iPad Pro, but the general rules are applicable to any digital painting software and tablet.
You will review some theories behind shading and lighting and will have fun practicing with different types of shading settings, lighting setups and gradients.
Note that to take this class you should be familiar with digital tools like Procreate app and other digital drawing elements like sketching, flat colouring and layers. If you need brushing up on some of them, we highly recommend you first take Maria’s course “How to Draw a Cartoon Character“.
Assignment: Create a beautiful artwork with an interesting lighting setting
This is your chance to experiment with different lighting settings!
If you wanna post your results on social media don’t forget to tag Maria for a shoutout! You can find her at:
Good luck, but especially, have fun!
Preview class
Maria Malandrino introduces herself and her new tutorial on shading and lighting, a drawing stage that can have a huge impact on the viewer’s perception of an artwork!
After reviewing some theories behind shading and lighting, Maria will show you how an artwork can be affected and improved by good lighting. She will also teach you how to use layers and blending settings in Procreate to achieve the results you expect.
In this tutorial Maria will use Procreate app on iPad Pro, but the basic principles of the course hold good for any other tablet and drawing software.
Preview class
Before getting started you first need to set up your canvas in Procreate.
In this lesson Maria will show you how to create the type of canvas that best suits your needs in terms of shape, size and DPI (to ensure your image prints sharp and crisp).
Then, you will be able to import a flat colour image into your canvas or use the available psd file. You can also sketch something out on the canvas right before getting started.
1 practice character PSD with sample lighting layers.
Preview class
Before practicing with shading and lighting it’s better to review some basic rules on how a shadow is formed. In this lesson Maria illustrates two main types of shadows, the cast shadows and the form shadows. She also provides some examples of how they appear and differ, depending on the source of light that generates them.
Preview class
Here Maria will pick one of her own artworks as reference image to demonstrate the cast and form shadows.
She will guide you through the steps of duplicating layers, creating a clipping mask and using blending modes in Procreate. She will also show you how a little bit of planning can help you stay on track throughout the entire creative process.
By watching this tutorial you will learn how to draw different types of shadows on a character’s body, to select the best tones and brushes, to modulate the opacity and change the shading settings according to the light source and the time of day.
Preview class
In this lesson you will learn how to make the most out of a character in a scene using a common photographic setup called 2-point lighting. You will get familiar with lighting principles and concepts such as the key light, the fill light and the rim light (3-point lighting), and will see how they are used in some practical examples.
Preview class
Now it’s time to watch Maria’s demo and practise with the 2-point and 3-point lighting setups.
In this tutorial Maria will show you how to use layers and blending settings (Overlay) in Procreate to draw the light on the areas that are reached and variously affected by it.
You will learn how to use complementary colours, adjust opacity, erase and refine some areas of your artwork to achieve the desired effect.
Preview class
In this tutorial Maria is going to use a close-up of the character she created in her course “How to Draw a Cartoon Character” to practice some examples of dramatic lighting, i.e. a type of lighting that adds to the visual interest of a portrait or an artwork.
Using layers, blend mode types and adjustment tools in Procreate, Maria will demonstrate special lighting setups that make a character pop out or draw attention to a detail, such as light coming from the side or from below and obstruction.
7 dramatic light example pictures (JPG) included
Preview class
In this final lesson you can see how Maria creates and uses gradients to alter the perception of the time of day, to set the desired mood and atmosphere of the scene and to add more colour variation to a character.
Maria is an illustrator and story artist from Turin, Italy. She has a BA degree in Magazine Publishing from the University of the Arts London, has studied Traditional Animation at the International School of Comics in Turin and attended a masterclass in Storyboarding at the online school CGMA.
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Each class includes 10-20 video lessons that are 10 minutes long on average. Most classes include exercise sheets, assignments and layered PSD or PNG files.
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I noticed that no one left a review for this class, so I’ll be the first to say… I like this class so far! I’ve been looking for new ways to improve my digital painting skills and I love the process Maria took me through to where I am so far. I was not sure to what layer she added the form shadows but her Photoshop files are a good way to follow along with the videos. I’m happy to see another talented Instagram artist show me a new way to approach digital painting. Thank you, Maria!
Awesome course! Very informative ❤️
I absolutely loved the course. 5 stars! Maria shows us how to achieve a wide variety of lighting setups with proper demos. Her demo file is even better when it comes to increasing your understanding of the concept.
I only wish they could highlight the cursor on the screen for better visual ease when you need to follow what the artist is saying on the screen. It gets very tricky in the middle of an elaborate demo. You need to keep replaying in order to understand the concept fully.
This course is an absolute gem for beginner digital artists. Though you need to be fairly comfortable working with layers and features of Procreate before you go for this class. However, for people who want to enhance their knowledge of lighting, this is a pretty well rounded short course. I really enjoyed it and I’m looking forward to more such short constructive classes. Great job 21 draw! Please add more 1 hour long additional learning courses like these!
This course was very good in showing the lighting and shading techniques and it was very helpful to me.
Thank you Maria
Simple, yet straight to the point and very informative!
Grazie mille, Maria!
Awesome course! Highly recommend to anyone looking to improve their skills.
helped me lock down an approach to shading, i think my work is looking much better after
I loved the course, I loved that it had some theory too. María makes it easy to follow and to understand.
I loved all of it