Hi! I’m ixArcher, and I’ve been designing since early July '20. I’d like to share some things that I wish were taught to me early on so I didn’t have to spend so much time figuring it out! Below you’ll find an extremely simple guide to beginner’s shading.
This will not cover wrinkles in specific directions to make the clothing more realistic based on what you’re making. This is strictly beginner shading, nothing too advanced.
Step One
First, you’re going to want to make your base for the wrinkles. I’m using red because it’s the easiest to manipulate the color of in “Hue and Saturation”, unlike black or a darker color. If you are shading or doing wrinkles, never use black. Only use a darker color of your base.
The wrinkles can be in any direction, but it would make more sense if you did them in a direction that flows with whatever you’re making. This isn’t that type of tutorial, so I’ll just be doing a simple square base to do this on.
Go ahead and make your wrinkle base. It should look somewhat like the example to start.
Step Two
Next you’re going to want to make a new layer, and drag it under the wrinkle base. Then you can increase your brush size and draw some thicker lines under the wrinkle base.
Step Three
Make sure you’re still on the thicker lines layer and set Gaussian Blur to 3.
Step Four
Now you’re going to want to start erasing the thicker lines that go over the base wrinkle. It should look something like this:
Step Five
Next, go to your base wrinkle layer and make it as light as you can by increasing the lightness. Then set the gaussian blur* to 2.
Step Six
Now you can set your opacity and color on both layers to whatever looks best with your clothing peice.
Step Seven
Now you’re going to want to set your brush to a higher number, such as 10-20. Make sure your Hardness is set to 100.
Step Eight
Draw around the border of the clothing, curving around the edges. Make sure this layer is above the wrinkles layer.
Step Nine
We’re almost done! Set your Gaussian blur for that layer to around 10-20, whatever looks best!
Step Ten
Now you can set your opacity to whatever looks best with your clothing, make sure to not make it too light or too dark!
You should be finished with your shading now! I hope you all leave this post with a little more knowledge on how to properly make wrinkles and shade at a beginner’s level.
