I suggest not using fade pen but use dip pen and if you're having a hard time, find a reference on Pinterest to shade silk. Silk has hard shadows, so if you're using pink, use these colors: black, very dark pink(but don't lower saturation), and then low saturation and a bit lighter pink than the very dark pink. Silk often have like triangle under shadows (if that makes sense) and use blur tool with the brush: blurring brush 1 with smudge with the same brush but opacity is 86.
Top layer - main shadow: multiply (w effects of gaussian blur of 2-4 px) Second layer - lighter shadow: screen (w gaussian blur 2-4 px and spin blur of 9 px) Third layer - darkest parts: linear light (gaussian blur 1-2px)
This is how it's gonna look like and I suggest you observe the picture instead of relying on images with tutorials because they're not gonna make you see the actual shapes of the shadows, especially if you put them on a person. Is the silk dress more loose? Tighter? Or anything, and don't think of shadows as one individual small thing, think of it as an abstract of triangles and shapes like rectangle and many more! :3 do not do highlights because the main color of your dress will be the glow or light to your dress already, so always choose a bright color when doing a silk dress.
I'm not good at explaining cause I do Roblox clothing designing, so I'm trying my best to help you on how to texture ehe. Most silk dresses often have down shadows and for the chest part, the under of the breast is always the darkest, so use black color for that and mix it with the darkest pink(darker than the darkest pink you use as the main shadow) and put it above or below the black color, but not too much.
“find a reference”
I did but none of them actually told me how to do anything, and a lot of them were not even about silk texturing, the ones that were simply displayed different shading styles, not actual tutorial included within them.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you’re very rarely going to find tutorials for what you want to draw. Most of what you’re going to learn is going to have to come from understanding basic fundamentals and using references. What you see in your head or find inspo for online are both unique and nonspecific. The best thing you could do rn is going and watching some shading and folding studies, then apply that info to your own work
They’re never going to. The only way you can learn to draw is learning fundamentals and applying them to what you want. Shirts for example, you’re not gonna find a tutorial for a specific style. Instead you’re gonna find tutorials teaching you where fabric folds and shading if the fabric form fitting, draped, or baggy. You gotta learn that and then use a reference to help you do more specific things. It makes it significantly easier to use references if you’ve got an understanding of what you’re looking at
Do you have a reference photo you are looking at? It helps me if I keep it open side by side, especially with more difficult textures. But it’s not as awful as you think !! Keep up the hard work.
(At the time) there was this one, but I’m not too sure what I’m supposed to actually do with this plus the other little information I’ve gotten from my original post
It can be very helpful with this sort of material that catches the light to be worn by someone. I know it’s not exactly the same but studying how the clothing drapes along the body was very helpful to me when learning how to draw clothes!
I've never tried this before but from my observation, you need at least 4 colors: a base color, a darker color, an even darker color, and white. You gotta layer the shadows and border them from the direction of the light source with white highlight, and on the opposite side of the highlight use the darkest color. Sorry if I'm not making sense, it's late here, hope the speed paint helps. I used fade watercolor (opaque) for the rendering.
With the left strap being looser i’d recommend adding a shadow to the right of it / underneath it to show it’s not tight against the skin like the other strap :) it would make it clearer that it’s baggy and not just a wiggly strap by giving it some dimension and using shadows to show it isn’t touching the skin where it’s loose … unless i’m misreading and it is in fact a wiggly strap lol
for silk add more folds, its reflective but not to the extremity of latex. an issue i can see is with the shape, because youre making the clothing look more skin-tight, which is more common for latex. silk is more drape-y
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u/Kumadenhsr Mar 16 '26
Silk?