5 Popular Shading Techniques You Can Effortlessly Replicate In Procreate

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Whether you are a very beginner at art, translating your art skills to the digital world, or simply want to learn more and advance your digital art shading techniques, you are in the right place. Learning to translate shading techniques from paper and pencil to digital art is not hard, in fact when you learn and realize the tools, brushes, and settings that digital drawing apps put in the hands of artists, you will never look back.

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Considering the blending shading technique for example, takes practice and time to make your blending smooth and transitional on paper or canvas. But what if I told you that there is multiple choices when it comes to blending in digital art! There is brushes for blending, there is tools in the menu to apply blending effortlessly, there is adjustments you can make to your brushes right on the interface, oh and lets not forget the actual smudging tool. But the blending fun doesn’t stop there, you can also put in use any brush with the eraser tool. The choices will just blow your mind. Pick your favorite! Looking for great resources to enhance your artistic skills?

This blog is all about shading techniques specific to advance your digital art.

Blending shading technique on digital art.

Blending, when it comes to shading is the technique that creates smooth transitions between light and dark values. When it comes to art shading techniques, blending is one of the most important. Our eyes feel happy when art is well blended because smooth transitions look realistic. In Procreate for example is actually fun when you realize the multiple choices you can count on to blend shading.

Let’s begin talking about Procreate brushes that are naturally great for blending, for example inside the airbrushing category. This brushes will take any flat drawing and make it pop in no time. Combine the power of Alpha Lock or Clipping Mask for easy and fast shading, and if you pressed too hard then use the same brush with the eraser tool to take away as much as you can with a brush that’s already blended!
Don’t worry if you still need more practice making things smooth enough by just controlling the Apple Pencil Pressure, it’ll come with practice. In the mean time, there is an amazing tool that blends beautifully and you can control the intensity of it. It’s called Gaussian Blur. You don’t even need airbrushes when you use Gaussian Blur! This tool can blend the harshest lines out there, remember to make sure you are on the right layer before you use it. To access this tool, tap on the Adjustments tool (the magic wand) and then tap on Gaussian Blur, you should then see the Gaussian Blur percentage at the top of your screen. Slide left or right to adjust until you are happy with it. To deactivate just tap on the magic want again. Truly works like magic!
The smudge tool on the top right menu performs a great imitation of the rendering shading technique. The great thing about it is that you can use it with any brush in the library, just like the eraser tool. It works specially stunningly with the airbrush category brushes.
Last I want to mention how changing the brush opacity can imitate the way you blend on real paper. When you blend shadow with real paper and pencil you change the intensity you use on your pencil to make it look smooth and transitional. You can imitate this when using digital art on procreate by decreasing the brush opacity on the the side bar.

The blending shading technique was applied on this spheres. 1. Gaussian blur 2. Airbrushes from the Procreate library 3. Blended using the smudge tool 4. Blended manually using manipulating Apple pencil pressure and brush opacity.

Cross hatching shading technique in digital art

Cross hatching is the technique that uses crossing lines to create shadows and light. The Cross hatching shading technique is faster and easier in digital art than in real paper. There is brushes in the Procreate digital art library that imitate cross hatching. Let’s take a look a some of them.

Instead of cross hatching manually like you would do with a pencil (although you totally can), use the advantages of digital art by leveraging a brush the imitate the strokes. One of the best brushes included in Procreate to accomplish this technique is Hessian inside the Organic category. Works pretty amazingly and responds well to the Apple Pencil pressure, which makes it perfect for cross hatch shading.
Another wonderful brush you already have in the Procreate library that can imitate the cross hatching shading technique is Spicule inside the Abstract category.

Visit the (1) cross hatching section and the (2)contour hatching section of this post to know what brush was used to imitate this technique.

Contour hatching shading technique

The contour hatching shading technique uses lines that follows the shape of the subject. This method creates the sense of volume and three-dimensionality.

Help yourself with the Procreate brushes that look like this shading techniques instead of creating one stroke at the time! There is brushes in the library that can create contour hatching in no time, and they look fantastic. The sphere bellow was shaded imitating the contour hatching technique using the Short Hair brush in the Materials category of the Procreate brush library.

Rendering shading technique in digital art

In the rendering technique you apply the shading and then use the eraser to create areas of light. Digital art in Procreate makes this even better and easier than with a real moldable eraser on paper, and that’s because you can incorporate any brush into your eraser tool, which means keeping your textures even when your are erasing!

Take for example the brushes in the Charcoal category of the Procreate brush library, practice applying shadows uniformly over a sphere then to keep the texture incorporate the same charcoal brush into the eraser and go over to create the light areas.

Visit the (1) rendering section and the (2)stippling section of this post to know what brush was used to imitate this technique.

Stippling shading technique in digital art

In Stippling is the shading technique where the areas of shadow and light are created using dots. The dots are the same size, however you form the shadow area by applying a greater amount and keeping them closer to each other.

Digital art is all about the advantages you don’t have when you work with real pencil, brushes, canvas and paper. In digital art you can definitely use your any of the shading techniques manually done, but it’s really not necessary. Fortunately, when you are using digital art, there is no need to do stippling manually (also it takes time and lots of practice). Instead you are now able to recreate a real good imitation of the stippling technique with a brush included in the Procreate library called Newsprint, inside the Vintage category. Use a combination of pressure and lightness with the Apple pencil, along with the Newsprint brush in the eraser tool. Remember you can incorporate any brush in the eraser or smudge tool.
Another great brush for the stippling shading technique is Honeyeater inside the Vintage category. This brush is excellent because it’s very responsive to the amount of pressure you put on the pencil.