Face shadows

Okay so I got a touchpad and started doing cartoon-ish faces. Here’s a a friend I did and my problem is that I don’t know how to do the shadows. I cannot understand the way the shadows have to be. Can you help me ? This is where I am so far:

(self-taught)

This sounds a little obvious, but I’m not trying to be patronizing. Think about where the light source would be coming from. That will tell you where the shadows would fall. Overall, I think what you have here is looking pretty good.

You need to study a little anatomy and some lighting views.
Here is a goggle images to help you “see”
https://www.google.com/search?q=face+3/4+shadow&client=firefox-b-1&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj694G53a3cAhVHh-AKHW9JBIQQ_AUICigB&biw=739&bih=644

Note how the shadows follow the bone structure, not just random arcs.
And note how the nose casts a shadow and where it goes depending on the direction of the light source.

And don’t get all hung up on shadows having to be exactly like shadows … they can be really subtle or not. It all depends on the narrative.

Also … Shade and Shadow are two different elements which can describe ‘form’.

I’d show you my buddies work but the link would prolly get flag … sigh … don’t know how to protect a link.

thank you all for the replies, i read some stuff about the anatomy of the face and the article about shade/shadow, it helped me a lot. ill post the results later if yall interested :slight_smile: once again thank you

Nothing wrong with linked content that is helpful and pertinent to the conversation. It’s not the same as some spammy sales pitch :wink:

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Thanks for the clarification RedKittieKat.

Warning: Subject matter contains images of violence and some nudity …

Maciej Kuciara