EASY Pencil SHADING Basics ! How to Draw Realistic Portraits, Skin Tones- Tutorial for BEGINNERS!

Hello, if you are a beginner and you wonder how shading works to create realistic skin tones or realistic shadows but you don't have any idea and your drawing still looks flat and not 3d or three-dimensional then this tutorial video is exactly for you because i'm going to show you how shadows work how tonal values and why is it important to use at least three shades of pencils to create something like this if you're interested watch this tutorial video and i'm going to show you how tonal values work but of course everything starts with the proper proportion or outline of the drawing because this is a realistic style you may not need this kind of an outline method for other styles but for realism you want it to look as real as possible so what i do is this yeah i just divided my reference photo into four and then i get the middle part and then what i do is i want to make a little smaller than the reference photo so i put a cross in the middle and what i do is i just reduce the edges equally to make just the correct proportion but smaller than the reference photo so now i have this smaller square right here because of the crease cross the x that i put i was able to lesser the size of the reference into a smaller drawing because i realized that my reference is too big so now i'm gonna just divide use my judgment here i just want to divide the four squares into smaller squares even smaller squares to make a more nicer and a more accurate proportion now i'm gonna just draw the outline of the eyes including the eyebrows up to the eye bags and then the edge of the eyes right here in this like trapezoid shape right here and i'm just gonna draw this outline into my drawing paper exactly where the position of these lines on this is smaller but the same proportion square right here so this is what i'm gonna do including the nose and the lips just place where uh the basic eyes nose and lips into the paper because trust me that is the most important thing that you need to get this is a little bit more controversial still at this day and age when it comes to people saying that it's like cheating or something like that but it's not for me if your style is realism you want to be able to capture the likeness of your reference you want to be able to get commission portraits from people who want their picture to be to look exactly like them so this is not a bad idea this is part of the process this is part of the artistic process but let me tell you let me hear from you about your opinion about this outline methods the grid methods tracing method that artists are doing is it really part of the artistic process or do you believe this is cheating or something like that but personally i don't uh this is just a method where you want your outline to look like this it's so nice to be able to capture the real likeness because this again this is realism now i'm gonna show you how i did i started already with the left eye now i'm gonna show you on the right eye how i did it using three shades of pencil now i start with my darkest pencil this is charcoal the darkest chart the dark charcoal if you are this maybe is like this 5b to 8b or even darker trust me you really need super dark pencils to achieve um contrast it is important for realism to achieve contrast the super dark in relation with your light colors because if you just use one grade of pencil your drawing will look flat and not realistic at all not appealing at all now this green pencil this is my mid pencil i use it for the mid-tone so this is the mid-tone is uh the majority actually of the drawing the shade that you're going to do because this will reflect the overall tone of the drawing and uh you can observe right now the difference in tone with the dark pencil and the mid-tone see the mid-tone is considerably lighter but not really light so in terms of graphite the mid-tone will have to be your b up to 3b 2b and 3b that can be considered as a mid-tone now this great pencil right here uh in charcoal term this is the light or the hard pencil this is for your very light shadows and you can also use it as a blender it will blend the dark and the mid to create a nice smooth texture of your drawing but essentially this is for super light shadows that has to be reflected on your drawing to achieve realism okay so now i what's this that i'm using oh this is a pencil eraser i'm using it for my for some details of the drawing even the needed eraser you can you need it to adjust the tone or the highlights of the drawing right here and for also from some highlighted details so the idea of this tutorial is to show you that it's important to observe the behavior of the shadows the relationship of the shadows we have the dark the mid and the light so that is exactly what these three pencils are all about it's about making the dark super dark like you can see the eyebrows right there and the part of the eyeball and this part the what do you call it some parts here eyebrows right here that i'm drawing i decided to use the mid pencil for the eyebrows or rather the eyelashes because they are not too dark based on my reference photo now yeah now what i do here is layer the pencil blend it using soft makeup brush and then layer again and then use like a tortillion or a paper blender just to make everything smoother and nice now for the nostrils i decided to use the violet again is my darkest pencil and here the line of the mouth right here is super dark also usually on all portraits so i use the dark now the mid pencil the green the mid pencil is i use it on the edges of the nose you don't want them to be too dark you just want them to just like reflect a darker shadow compared to the rest of the skin tone okay so and then yeah i'm actually i'm softening the outlines right here using this green pencil so again using different shades with graphite there are several shades ranging from h pencil to the b to the 8b to the 10b to the 14b you don't need all the shades you just requires for graphite at least five shades you have to have an h an hb a b 5b or 8b so anything that ranges from very light to very dark but for charcoal pencils which is very nice actually this is a new charcoal pencil that i'm using right now and i'm loving it this is the kuwe locks brand charcoal pencil very cheap very cheap charcoal pencil but very nice in making skin tones with the proper tonal values right here now this is the gray pencil this is the very light pencil it is the light charcoal or the neutral pencil i use it for super light shadows like here on the side of the nose this is usually very delicate shadow very very important because if we use dark here it will look like dirt it will look like a mess but because we are using a very nice light shadow right here you can see that you know can you see it look at her eyes right there this is a combination of dark mid and super light pencil right here that i'm using right now her lips is very nice and delicate okay so now i love this pencil this why is it very cheap but very nice pencil the kuwe locks the same brand with the sprayer a fixative spray i didn't know that they have a charcoal but yeah but the idea here is to blend to make skin tone with different values okay can you see how nice and smooth and how the relationship of every shadows usually the mid-tones and the light ones are on the nose part right here and it's really nice and delicate and the dark parts are on usually on the eyes right there okay this is the casimir rubbing tool to make everything a little bit more smoother right there so i uh don't know if you get the idea of this video as a beginner importance of using not just one or two pencils use different grades of pencil to reflect a nice tonal value of a drawing to make it look really nice and realistic right here let me know your thoughts on the comment section thank you for watching