I CANNOT UNSEE THE HIPPO NOW

not sure if i want to either

eh

here have an apple cherry red ball thing



courtesy of New Tablet™

Depends, all of them are usable methods. I personally start with a more or less solid outline, fill it with colour and then shade over the flat colours with a brush (preferrably 100% opacity, i can't into sub-100% brushes). I know other artists just kind of do it all at once, and also do use semi-transparent brushes to shade with. Try things out, figure out what you like best! The most important part is that you're comfortable with it, or at least want to get comfortable with it (although once you are really comfortable, branching out won't hurt). I know i started out knowing basically nothing about what the hell i was doing other than "LIGHT SIDE BE LIGHT AAAAAAAAAAA".

Also, as for programs, there's a wide variety available. Free ones include GIMP, although it's supposedly... Gimped in the newer versions. Then there's Photoshop, of course, but it costs a fortune. Also, good old Paint can also serve ones needs, although it doesn't have layers or other advanced things. I also hear good things about Paint Tool SAI (which also seems to be free), but i haven't tried it yet. Again, test things out, you'll find a preference pretty quickly.

what i'm trying to say is don't think so much about it and just grab a tool and shade like one of your french girls

If need be, i can TRY elaborating a bit further, even though i'm not the most qualified person to do that.

I got mine from an internet contest. :D

On that note, i'm reasonably sure my bro got it for free by virtue of being a multimedia design student. I tend to use GIMP though, for some odd inexplicable reason that i'm not wholly sure of.

@Non: Dude that's totally normal, it takes a fair while to get the hang of it (i should know, i'm still not super good at it even after 3 years). Don't be discouraged by little setbacks like that, i mess up all the time. Hell, most people mess up all the time, some of them are just really good at masking it. From what i've seen, you're a fair bit better than a complete newbie at drawing, so i'm sure you could learn it quickly. It's all about taking little clues from reality, and then trying to replicate them.

For example, for spheres, we have the moon and its phases, which display a full rotation of a light source around a sphere.


Very convenient, since it hangs in the sky every night. If you want to get going on shading, i'd recommend starting on the basic shapes first, like the sphere. Cylinders are even easier, likewise with boxes, since the light level on the individual faces is relatively flat.



Eh? Nevermind the fact that it's apparently standing on a slope. Three light levels for three faces, since the top-most surface is being hit more directly by the light than the front of it, and the side is just plain not lit. Try it out, show us! c:

Yeah, keep in mind the direction of the light, the angles it hits different surfaces and how that increases or decreases brightness, stuff like that. Personally I like to learn by drawing from reference to get a feel for how things would look irl before attempting to create something from scratch, but how you learn varies per person I guess.

Dumping some recent scraps and sketches below

Those are just scraps and sketches?
Goddamn

hwuey

Aside from breaking the cardinal sin of resolution mixing, it looks pretty good,

The bottom border is thicker than the top one.

Cartoon me.

Needs more guns

That inspired by Donnie Darko?

Sketches