Shading practice worksheets
One page that covers the whole of basic shading: a five step value scale, hatching, cross hatching, stippling and blending each with an empty square to copy into, then the sphere, cube, cylinder and cone to shade twice.
Curated by 
Willa Fern
How do you practise shading?
Start with a value scale to learn the range from light to dark, then copy each technique in a square of its own. Finish on the four basic solids, shading each one twice with the light coming from a different side, because the light direction decides every shadow on the page.
What each section trains
The value scale comes first because every other exercise depends on it. Five boxes, each darker than the one before, teaches the hand how much pressure separates one step from the next. Most beginners use only the middle third of the range, and a drawing made entirely of mid greys reads as flat no matter how accurate the outline is.
Choosing a technique
Hatching is a set of parallel lines and is the quickest to control. Cross hatching lays a second set across the first, so tone builds up in layers rather than in one pass. Stippling is slow and gives the smoothest gradient a pencil can make. Blending smudges the graphite directly and covers ground fastest, at the cost of the crisp edge the other three keep.
Why the forms appear twice
The sphere, cube, cylinder and cone are the four solids every drawn object reduces to. They are printed twice on purpose: once lit from the top left and once lit from the right. Shading the same form under two lights is what makes the rule stick, because the shadow moves and the form does not.