Shading Approach For Digital Painting

This is not a tutorial with any particular subject in mind. This would be about the process involved in getting a good gradient from one color to multiple colors. This technique could be used in various cases like texture rendering and depiction of features with rendering of light and shadow.

For sake of example, let us take a simple form we want to create the gradient in.

To this we will fill in the basic colors we want to add. Take a brush, a large one should be fine, and set opacity to 100%. If you are using a tablet, switch off the opacicity control by the tablet pen. (In GIMP, it will be a check box in the control panel of the brush). Choose the base colors and block out the areas of those colors roughly.

The result looks sort of ugly, but that is not an issue since we will be moving in with a smaller brush and working on the shading.

For purposes of reference, I have numbered these regions. Note that such a process is not necessary while actual shading - it is only to make the explanation less ambiguous.

Now take a smaller brush, set it to color #3. If you are using a mouse to do the digital painting, bring down the opacity to around 50%. If you are using a tablet, switch on the opacity control of the tablet in your graphics editor.

With the color #3 on the brush, stroke near the edge between #3 and #1. If you are using a tablet, stroke lightly.

Use the eyedropper tool and pick up the newly created color.

Now fill up the full edge with 100% opacity. (With your tablet pen, paint with full pressure). You will see that it would have blended the two colors a bit. In case you see it still being blocky, repeat the process of lightly stroking, picking up the color, and going over the edges.

This time, I picked up the color #1 and stroked on the region #2.

Here, since the values between the two colors are quite large, the gradient is stripe like and requires further attention.

Repeating the process of picking the gradient color, stroking it lightly on each side with tablet pen (or low opacity brush with mouse), picking that color up with the eye dropper tool and blending the stripe edges, I get a nice gradient from color #1 to color #2.

Now, for the final combination, #2 and #3. I picked up the #3 color and painted it on the #2 region with lower opacity. (You can do vice versa too - we just need to get the blended color).

The same process is applied to blend the colors between the region #3 and #2.

You will notice that it still looks a bit messy. You can leave it at this if you are working on higher DPI, else you can go in there with a smudge tool.

Stroke the brush along the gradients you created to smoothen it out until you get the desired flow of the colors. This would be the point in time, where you can further tweak the shape of the object you are rendering.

One would argue, as to why we did not go in with the smudge or the blend tool after we blocked out the colors. I have attempted this, and found that it give a rather messy look if you let the computer choose the colors for you. Also, this approach lets you tweak to your hearts content and gives full flexibility. Use of different types of brush shapes can also help you get a texture feel.

How do you approach shading a gradient in digital painting?