People think getting the right brush, or coolest color or the perfect medium is going to make them better painters. Painting is primarily an eye thing. A stick with the right value will make a far more meaningful mark than the finest sable brush or expensive pigment.

So, when people ask me to teach them about “shading,” my answer is very simple: Without a light source you don’t have shadows. Without shadows you don’t have shade. Without shade there can be no shading. What people think of when they say “shading” is the way we deal with transitions between light and shade, called halftones. This “shading” is all about edge quality, which can range between very soft and paper hard. Then, within the light and shadows, we have something called modeling, which are subtle changes in value limited to the available range of value in the light and shadow. Always remember, form = value.