Some great tips for putting light and shade into your pictures! You will need: Paper Pastels or Pencils & Rubber

You often hear of people talking about putting light and shade in their pictures. But what is it? What does it do? Well, it's guaranteed to make your pictures better.

Take a look at this large ball. It has light shining on it from a lamp on the left hand side. The other side is in the shade.

So - let's draw that. This drawn ball has no light and shade on it, and it looks really flat.

So if the light is coming from this side...

...this side of the drawing will be lighter. Here, Neil is using pastels.

The other side is in the shade, where there's no light.

If you're using white paper for your drawing, you can just leave the white showing through, to create the highlight. Just colour the darker areas in.

In this picture, the light is coming from a spotlight above the singer.

Neil draws in the light, where it touches the singer. Again, he's using pastels, which can be blended by using fingers.

Now he's drawing the darker side - the one that the light can't get to.

For coloured pictures, just darken the colours in the shady bits, and lighten them for the highlights.

On pictures drawn with pencil, You can even use a rubber to add higlights to your pictures! In this picture, the light is coming from the window...

...so the side of the vase facing the window will be lighter. Neil's using a rubber to to rub out pencil to create a highlight, and a darker pencil for shading on the other side. Try it yourself!