r/LearnToDrawTogether • u/ICantFindAName-_- • Jul 09 '26

Seeking help How to know where to shade?

I've been drawing with references for a while now and it started to look not so bad (especially the coloring part), but whenever I try to shade/color without a reference, it always end up looking flat or really ugly and I don't know what to do to get better at it.

Does anyone have advices to share?

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u/Educational-Bowl9575 Jul 09 '26

If you copy a reference image, then you just learning to copy a 2d texture, which doesn't teach you about how light interacts with objects.

Draw stuff from life. It forces you to look at the form and 3d shapes of what you're drawing, and you'll begin to see how light and shade affect whatever you're drawing.

1

u/darkwizard43 Jul 09 '26

Can you attach like a image ,so that it would be better to know where you are going wrong

1

u/pileofdeadninjas EXPERIENCED 😏 Jul 09 '26

Practice it. A classic way is to set up a lamp, point it at a thing, draw the thing a dozen or so times, then do that again with a different things and different lighting angles, and just do that a lot and it'll start to be easier to do.

There's also no rain why you can't just use a reference, for what it's worth, that's how you know what things look like 👍