Hi Samuel! Continue practicing gesture and pushing the motion of the figure, even when doing more rendered work, as it helps you get more accurate or informed drawings. As you start shading while learning anatomy, keep going back to observing what you see: break down the image into light and dark groups at the start. There will be changes of value within the shadows, but they will still be darker than areas in the light. I drew out some notes for you I hope are helpful.

Nice drawing. Are you using digital? I always find digital art fabulous for animation but it always comes off rubbery to me when attempting a traditional style.

Really nice! I actually think the structure is the strongest part of this drawing, so don't worry about that. - The structure and rendering looks pretty good, but the values are a bit confusing. Some of the values in the light are as dark as the darker parts of the shadows. And some of the values in the shade are as light as the lightest parts of the lights. As a rule of thumb, the lightest dark should be darker than the darkest light. Check out this video Mind-Blowing Realistic Shading Tricks. One important part of shading is value control. Are you familiar with values? If think this could be a great time to go on a short detour from the figure drawing course, and do some value studies. Dorian Iten has a great video on value studies How to Organize Values . You can get it for free in the Proko Course Sampler. For me it helped to start by doing 2-value studies. Then when I felt like I had a good grasp of that, I moved to 3-value studies. Then 4, then 5. For the 5 value study you might use this process: first a 2-value separation. Then add a midtone (3rd value), then add a darker light (4th value) and a lighter dark (5th value). Pick or take photos of a subject you like to make the exercise even more enjoyable. Having good value control and having a good grasp of value grouping will really help when shading. Plus I think you'll find that you can do some really cool stuff with it. - Another thing that has helped me when shading is to clearly define the shadow shapes in a lay-in. Making sure that they're not ambigous, but clearly designed. Making the terminator edge soft, and giving a hard edge to cast shadows and the end of a form in shadow, gives a clear effect of light right away. Hope this helps :) Let me know if you have any questions.

The drawing is really cool, if a bit confusing to me, but then again, the pose is also kind of confusing, it took me a second to realize she is looking at the camera in the floor... I think the proportions are a bit off, since the perspective is so dramatic her feet and lower legs should be a bit bigger in comparison to her torso...

Pretty good. I got 2 comments I think may help a little here. First is that the edges look a bit jagged, and missing some overlapping in some areas that would help the depth out. If the linework was a bit more fluid and stylistic, it would really come to life with energy. Second, is that the reference was shot with a fisheye lens effect and you can really bring this out by foreshortening the back leg, especially the foot and her right arm a bit more. And even make her bend back a little more with exaggeration to make the shot more dynamic. Show the difference in size between the appendages that are closer to camera vs those in the background. Overall, great job! cheers.

Hey Apple, not really a shading critique because I like your shading, but I really think you should spend a bit more time on proportion. Trust me, proportion is my least favorite part of drawing, but it really makes your drawing feel more cohesive if done correctly. In most drawings I do, about one 1/3 of my time spent is just on proportion because of it's importance (and my lack of intuitive proportion). Now there's a ton of ways to measure proportion, and many videos are here on Proko about it, so I won't relate what I do here (unless you'd like me to). A good exercise is to compare your reference to your drawing and see what things you tend to make bigger or smaller, and remember that next time you go into a longer drawing. But yeah, in case you forgot, I've been following you for a bit because I really like seeing your progress, and I hope you'll continue to grow as fast as you are now. - Dwight

Hello. The shading on this one looks much more clearer and readable. If you want a figure with only 6 values, the figure drawing demo of Yoni from Stan applies this principle. If you want more of a challenge, you could try to replicate one of Michael Angelo's anatomy studies. It's a very complex drawing but the shading is only reduced to 5 values. I've attached it to the post. Something that might also help is doing a compositional study where you just do a quick drawing of the figure but with the flat values and assign the 5 of them to the figure before starting the real drawing (2 for the shadows, 3 or 4 to the lights). Try to make the core shadow darker than the reflected light. You did this well on the leg but on the torso it's much less noticeable. This is optional but another thing that I like to do is hatching to give it some texture. For example, I would do some hatching surrounding the leg near the core shadow to better represent the cylindrical form of the leg. As for the general form and gesture its pretty good. The only thing is the breast shape is a bit different from the reference. In the reference is more elongated but in yours it has a more rounder shape. Not that big of a deal tbh.

The reference you used has soft lighting but you made your shadows too confusing. Dont overcomplicate the shadow family and make it compete with the light family. If you do, there's no harmony to the figure. For example in the legs, you have a mixture of shadow tones and half tones and this breaks the shading. For the shadows just use two tones for the start (one for the core shadow and other for the reflected light) and also dark cast shadows when the surface is covered by something. The rule is the lightest dark is always darker than the darkest halftone. It's hard to keep this in mind but this must apply throughout the entire drawing. I usually take a few breaks when shading to keep my mind clear because it can get tiring if you shade for hours straight. There are also some lines that seem unnecessary like the one between the shoulders near the spine and the other one the butt. Those sharp lines hurt your drawing so avoid them as much as possible unless it's absolutely necessary to indicate a sharp turn. Always start by separating light and shadow with a single line (the terminator) variating between soft and hard edges observing the reference. In this case, it's mostly just soft edges. Make sure the shadow family has less details and focus more on the light family. You need to make a plane get lighter in the center (center light) with the highlights (if there's one) and that light slowly fades has it goes away from the center (halftones) If you're just starting with shading, I recommend you use fewer values (5 to 6) just to master the fundamental concepts, then you slowly build up details by increasing the value range. The form, gesture, proportions look pretty good.

You can definitely replicate the traditional method. It could help to use a more "traditional" based digital program, such as Rebelle 5 Pro, or Corel Painter. However, it's not strictly necessary. You can set up your digital drawing pen (I'm assuming you will use something like a wacom if on a pc, or an apple pencil if on an ipad) so the brush thickness will increase when you tilt the pen. This make sit behave similar to a real pencil... wider when you hold it more flat, and sharp and pointed when you hold the pencil more upright.

Chris, you definitely linked your shadow shapes in an appealing manner. The half-tones got over exposed in the photo, as you say. The rib-cage doesn't imply a egg-shaped roundness on the left. Perhaps soften that curve a little more...without losing a small straight. Have you every tried using toned paper to discretize your values a bit more? Overall, nicely done.