I never use dithering. Personal preference

http://www.pixeljoint.com/forum/foru...?TID=5692&PN=1  

Ok, Heres how to shade.
Lets say we want to shade a round object, like this circle (O), realistically.
(My art teacher taught me this and I have improved incredibly)
First, find a spot the light is coming from. You don't want 2000 suns all coming from one direction. So lets say for the O, we want the sun to come in like this O<----o (o is sun)
Then, make a small round cut out in that side (C). Leave that part the lightest, that is where the sun is coming from.
Then, make the opposite end the darkest, and make it, from there, go from dark to light.

But keep in mind that the sun isn't the only light source! There may be lamps, or imperfections in the perfect spere. For lamps, just draw highlights of white in that direction. For indents, use a slightly darker shade randomly where the indent/imperfection is.

Remember, though, pillow shading is terrible. Never. Pillow. Shade. Ever.  

Posted by KatGoesRawr

Ok, Heres how to shade.

You explained shading decently using O's. I applaud you.  

Posted by KatGoesRawr

Ok, Heres how to shade.
Lets say we want to shade a round object, like this circle (O), realistically.
(My art teacher taught me this and I have improved incredibly)
First, find a spot the light is coming from. You don't want 2000 suns all coming from one direction. So lets say for the O, we want the sun to come in like this O<----o (o is sun)
Then, make a small round cut out in that side (C). Leave that part the lightest, that is where the sun is coming from.
Then, make the opposite end the darkest, and make it, from there, go from dark to light.

But keep in mind that the sun isn't the only light source! There may be lamps, or imperfections in the perfect spere. For lamps, just draw highlights of white in that direction. For indents, use a slightly darker shade randomly where the indent/imperfection is.

Remember, though, pillow shading is terrible. Never. Pillow. Shade. Ever.

Can I see an example? Im more of a visual learner. Also, could you show an example on an object or something so I can understand it not just on a circle?
maybe like a baseball cap or something.  

Actually she told you the same as Dusty/Beoholder at page 2.  

First, start out by drawing your outline of the cap.

Next, find your spot of light. In this case, the sun is coming in from the left.

NOTE: Do not add your highlights like this. It's called pillow shading and it looks TERRIBLE

THIS is correct. The highlights are where the sun is facing and bend with the hats curves

Next, you want to add your darker values at the other end of the hat. Since this is away from the light, it will be darker. Make sure to curve it WITH the bends in the hat.

For a more realistic finish, blend these highlights and darker spots in with lighter shades for the dark, and darker shades for the light.


THE END.
Sorry for the bad pics, my drawing program was spazzin  

Looks like plastic more than realistic... No offence..  

Some crosshatching and smoothing the highlight and a bit more variability of the color would lead to a more realistic look. It's cloth, not plastic, but still it's pretty good.  

Yeah I know. As I said, my program was spazzing and I wasn't in the mood of going super detailed.
It was like freaking linking and disappearing when I moved the mouse, and it made it almost impossible to draw :3  

Posted by S. Serenity

I never use dithering. Personal preference

Dithering is a great way to give a surface the feeling of texture or to make a larger surface feel less bland, but if you're trying to keep something smooth and using dithering primarily as shading... Then that is when things immediately start looking like arse.  

Dithering is also a much harsher thing to look at in the day and age of LCD monitors that are crisp and clear. It was an amazing technique on CRT's, even using it to shade smooth objects as the pixels were blurred together, pretty much cheating color limitations and giving developers a way to pull off smooth gradients with only a handful of colors.  

It's a sub-woofer, one has transparencies the other does not.

If anyone wants to use it, give me credit.

Creative criticism?  

Its a plunger. Havent posted in a while, please tell me what to change.  

You have to remember, things are never perfectly smooth and fine.
Things have little dents and imperfections, adding these in discretely help a lot