Best Practices for Achieving Realistic Shading in Adobe Illustrator

[Rafealpati35172603oedg]

What are the most effective techniques or tools in Adobe Illustrator for achieving smooth and realistic shading in digital illustrations, and are there any advanced tips or tricks that the community recommends for elevating the quality of shading in vector art?

[Bobby Henderson]

When creating something purely vector-based most shading will have to be done using either object blends or gradients. Clipping masks can help with these effects. They can work in a manner similar to how a frisket helps when doing airbrush work.

Man-made objects with smooth surfaces can be realistically depicted using all vector artwork. Illustrartions of subjects, such as people, need a mix of raster and vector (or just raster alone) due to all the complex textures. If I'm going to create a vector portrait of someone I'm going to make it look more graphical than photo realistic.

[Riley Swett]

Without knowing exactly what kind of style you're trying to achieve and in what application, this is a little bit difficult to answer but there are multiple ways you can achieve "realistic" shading. If you want a one-click solution, the 3D effect can get you relatively accurate results quickly, but it's more difficult to stylize in my opinion and can look tacky.

If you're trying to have stylized shading, i.e. shading isn't necessarily true to real life color, gradients allow you to pick very specific colors that fit your palette, plus you can also use the "freeform gradient" that allows for the placement of colors that will blend together on a single shape. This can get muddy very VERY quickly so its best to keep it simple, using as few points as possible(you can scale the influence of individual points) or just stick to linear and radial gradients, creatively placed and shaped to blend into one form. The results of these methods are very much reliant on your own knowledge of form and lighting, so take your time when creating the gradients. Ultimately illustrator isn't intended for "realism" but it can be achieved to an extent with enough patience and practice. 

Protip when using gradients, try to keep the colors you pick analogous to each other or monochromatic, otherwise you risk creating muddy unsatisfactory colors where colors intersect and try to blend.