How to shade pearls and leather

As a result of your engagement in 2014 ( and this means hundreds of comments, likes, shares and emails received), for 2015 I decided to increase the number of my videos posted in order to reply with a video to all of you who were interested in something particular related to fashion design and illustration.

Therefore, I will introduce you my design teacher, Dorin Sandru, who is invited to show us some principles of shading that he teaches to his students, at the University of Art and Design.

I kindly asked Dorin to share with us some techniques he uses when teaching.

For today, he will show us how to shade pearls and leather texture in pencils.

Unlike the drawing part, the shading takes usually double the time.For example, if you need 3 hours to draw something, you will definitely need 6 hours to shade that drawing or to color it.

First, you have to draw the contour of the spheres. When drawing anything you have to make sure your constructed the form, the exterior contour of the desired object you want to shade.
Make sure you establish your light source because in function of this, the pearls will have a certain color and reflections.
We will shade the pearls like you shade spheres, on their generating line. The formula we use is light, light gray, dark gray, black, reflection. This formula is applied to any objects you want to shade, so keep it in mind.
Use gradient as shading technique and keep your arm almost perpendicular when shading. If there is the case, use a white sheet of paper under your hand because like this you will keep the paper clean.

In this drawing the source of light is upper left. The spheres are drawn using a soft line. After drawing underline the areas where the light and shadow of each sphere will be positioned. once you get the principle of shading one pearl, the rest will easily come. Give the pearls a glossy finish. Do not use pencil in the white spaces. You can shade them very soft or leave them white, just make sure you will make a nice transition between the light and shadow areas.

If it is easier for you, you can rotate the image when shading. We did not do this now to help you see the shading process better. Also, your position when drawing should be relaxed and comfortable just to make sure you will be focused only on the drawing.

And now, let's see how to shade the reptile leather.
Again, the light source comes from upper left. Draw the contour of the textured area respecting the pattern. And now, keeping in mind the direction of the light source, start shading. First we add the large surfaces leaving white the reflection of each scale.
From up to down, you will see that not only the scale respect the light, light gray, dark gray, black and reflex formula but also the full texture. This means the upper part is in the light and the lower is hidden in the darkness.
Between the scales you will fill those spaces with black to give the impression of tridimensional.