Drawing Tutorial: How to Shade an Apple (+Free Download)

Mastering shading is essential for creating depth and realism in your drawings. We chose an apple because it's pretty close to a sphere which happens to be a primary building block for shading.

Grab your pencils or your tablet or your computer and let's get started!

You can also grab a friend and tattoo the apple on their back... It's your choice, don't ever let anyone put you down!

1. Create a basic shape

Most lines in nature aren't completely straight, so understanding how the shadows and lights work on a round object will help you approach the roundness of the eyes or cheek bones, the curvature of a tree branch, and so on...

First draw a horizontal line (this one is actually straight... damn!) to distinguish the foreground from the background, on it sketch a circle and give you apple it's shape... Sure you can draw a worm coming out of it but who is going to shade it afterwards...? That tutorial might not be coming out anytime soon...

2. Choose light source and start crosshatching

Choose a light source... Maybe for this one time abstain from creating a dramatic backlit scene, also remain from turning the apple into a lamp, making "it" the light source and finally forget the hypothetical that the apple could be made out of transparent glass...

Again, I don't know when are those tutorials coming out, but this is not the one... If you are not that experienced yet, choose a more conventional option... Or do whatever you want. Don't ever let anyone put you down! You can also never learn to shade an apple...

Then start crosshatching curved lines from the darkest to the lightest part of the apple, condensing more of those lines to create shadows.

3. No More Spoilers

The free download goes into much more detail and includes a video of the drawing process in action! Did I already mention that it's free? It would be funny if it wasn't free after all... But it is trust me!

I hope you like your apple! Send your drawing to MoMA to see what they think... Invent some wild conceptual background for it and they might accept it...

I mean, have you seen Ringo Star's digital paintings? If you are ever feeling down about your skills, remember you'll always be a more talented illustrator and painter than Ringo Star, that's a Domestika guaranty!

Let's show MoMA and Ringo what we are made of:

- Join our Illustration courses
- How to draw a human body
- How to draw arms