Three dimensional shapes are the real-life objects we see around us every day. This is the world that we interact with: height, width, and depth. If you can draw simple three-dimensional shapes, you’ve got the building-blocks of drawing the three-dimensional world.
Cubes and Rectangular Solids
A cube or rectangular solid is like an extension of a square or rectangle into three dimensions. Rectangular solids surround us: buildings, filing cabinets, stereos. Read the rest of this entry »
"Untitled" by Riff shows an excellent use of brushes to render convincing hair.
Drawing hair may seem pretty intimidating at first when you consider how many strands are just in a handful of it! But the trick to drawing hair is NOT drawing it strand by strand. Break a mass into small chunks and it’s much easier to handle.
It’s not necessary to draw every little detail in hair, sometimes even a few rough strokes is completely acceptable! But it does not always seem convenient to draw hair when all you have is a blunt, round brush. But don’t worry, that can be remedied! Read the rest of this entry »
Shading is an important, even essential aspect of drawing. We all have our own shading techniques. I, myself, am a blender. Hard lines? They frighten me. After all, reality has no hard lines… it’s all shades of gray. Mostly. I mean, that’s not a hard and fast rule, either, is it? Philosophy aside, one of the techniques I use incessantly in drawing on Muzy is blending color or shades of a color as I draw. Here’s how it’s done. Read the rest of this entry »
Hatching is a form of shading using only lines. It is a compilation of single sets of lines facing in one direction and allowing their distance to create value. Crosshatching, as it’s name suggests, is several sets of lines layered over each other to create value.
A dot is the shortest line in the world. Stippling is the technique of drawing and shading with dots and dots only. It can be a very subtle and open technique, or very heavy and detailed. Either way, the patience it takes is well worth the result. Here I’ve recreated Cooperweb’s lead ball with stippling:
Do you see how it works? In dark areas, there are more dots placed much closer together than in the lighter areas, where they are scattered farther apart.
Gradients are useful both for backgrounds, and as building blocks for items in your collage. This green gradient is one I made, and this tutorial walks you through the steps to make it. Gradients can be between any two colors (or more!), but the easiest gradients to make are between two similar colors or two shades of the same color. The more difference there is between the colors you’re gradating between, the more detailed work there will be in order to make the gradient smooth. Read the rest of this entry »
Here is a shaded sphere drawn in Muzy… It’s actually not too difficult to draw. Just start with a circle. One of the benefits of Muzy is that you can make a circle by choosing a large brush and just making one dot on the canvas.
Once you make a circle with your darkest color, it’s time to start shading. In this case, I used white, with a low opacity (10%). Starting with the highlight, I colored a small area… then colored a larger area over it… and so on, so that I had rough shading, starting at the highlight and getting darker toward the edges of the sphere. Read the rest of this entry »
Muzy is a fantastic collage tool, allowing you to put together elements into a complete picture. While you’re collaging, there are many fine touches that you can add to your image, and one of those is adding shadows. Adding a shadow makes an item appear as if it belongs in the background. This tutorial video shows you how simple it is to add a shadow to an item as you’re building a collage:
Shading is an important, even essential aspect of drawing. We all have our own shading techniques. I, myself, am a blender. Hard lines? They frighten me. After all, reality has no hard lines… it’s all shades of gray. Mostly. I mean, that’s not a hard and fast rule, either, is it? Philosophy aside, one of the techniques I use incessantly in drawing on Muzy is blending color or shades of a color as I draw. Here’s how it’s done. 
