face shading

[aa56817767]

I'm doing a portrait in illustrator but I need help with the shading of the face, just to give it more detailed

but I would like some help on how to do the shading, any tips???

Andi

[Monika Gause]

You could try gradient meshes (search for tutorials, there even should be portrait tutorials available)

Or try blends: a larger shape that has the color of the background and a smaller darker or lighter one, then blend those to create a smooth in-between)

Or create shapes and assign gaussian blur to them

[barbara_a]

Another possibility, if you want a more realistic look you could try Image Trace. This is the image using Automatic Profile.

After it was Expanded, I deleted the background shapes and added a gradient (Swatches panel menu > Open Swatch Library > Gradients > Vignettes). Expanding the image trace will convert the image to grouped vector shapes. There are so many shapes with so many anchor points, that I would not recommend ungrouping.

[Monika Gause]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Barbara+Ash  schrieb

Another possibility, if you want a more realistic look you could try Image Trace.

That doesn't make too much sense. You could keep the photo after all.

There are some insightful tutorials about creating portraits in Illustrator in a unique vector way:

26 Best Adobe Illustrator Portrait Tutorials | Designbeep

https://design.tutsplus.com/series/mastering-vector-portraits--cms-748

This one teaches some of the basic photorealism techniques

https://design.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-create-a-vector-portrait-with-curly-hair-in-adobe-illus...

This one is more stylized:

http://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/tutorials/adobe-illustrator/create-vector-portraits-from-photo/

These are not portraits, but cover gradient meshes:

https://design.tutsplus.com/articles/30-illustrator-gradient-mesh-tutorials-to-help-enhance-your-vec...

And here are some tipps and tricks for using meshes in portraits:

Adobe Illustrator Gradient Mesh Portrait Tutorial

[rcraighead]

Try these custom, transparent brushes:

http://www.raycraighead.com/uploads/1/2/5/3/12531834/fadebrushes.ai

They were used in this example:

Free Transparent Fade Brush Set for AI Users - Ray Craighead, Illustrator