The next step is to start shading your alien.

The biggest mistake that students make is that they do not treat each section of the alien as a separate piece.

For example, here is one of the aliens I drew.

shading alien 1.jpg

Many students would make the mistake of shading him as a solid shape. The highlight, mid-tone, core shadow, reflective light, and cast shadow are there, but it looks wrong.

shading alien 6.jpg

To fix that, we have to break down the alien in to sections: body is different from arms and legs, head is different from eyes and ears, helmet has separate sections, and so on.

shading alien 2.jpg

If you shade each of these sections with its own highlight, mid-tone, core shadow, and reflective light (sometimes a core shadow) it will look much more realistic.

Shading alien 3.jpg

Here, I did the body

Shading alien 4.jpg

Then the face and ears separately. Even at this unfinished stage, the alien is looking much better than when all the shading was lumped together.

Before you start shading your alien, deiced what sections need to be shaded separately. Please ask me, if you are having trouble breaking it down into sections.