Hey art forums. =] I'm having a bit of trouble with this, so it was suggested that I look here for help.



See the cute little emote? I'm trying to shade that. I refreshed my memory on the shape via a tutorial on deviantART. I planned to use the same tutorial to refresh my memory on how to shade it. Unfortunately, that tut didn't work for it as it simply showed how to use gradients to shade it. Now, I use GIMP. My gradients don't work right to shade it in such a way. So I did a more in-depth search to try and find a tutorial that would work.

Unfortunately, all anyone seems to use for shading now is Gradients. :stare:

Does anyone know of or have a tutorial for hand-shading emoticons? I am in desperate need of one right now, as I have this emote and then three more to shade. D:

Haha, I think I found your answer. :)
(Oh yeah, and I claim first post.)
Tecnique Numero Uno:
READ THE WHOLE THING FIRST because I jump around a little bit.
You can shade with the gradient, you just have to know how.
Click your gradient button and change your foreground color to the lightest you want yuor emote to be, and then change your background color to the darkest. Find the area (Main window, that has all the tools, while you're on gradient tool) with the little drop-down menu that should have a little gradient picture on it and should say "Linear" next to it.
Yeah, click on it and set it to the cricle one that says Radial.
Then, switch tools to the eclipse select tool (Oval) and go to your image of the smiley. Make a selection that outlines the INNER COLOR (not the outline of the emote) and use the gradient, starting with wherever you want the light to be to wherever you want the dark to be- and make sure it's set to Forground to Background, or else you'll have a demented emote on your hands.
Figit with the color a bit, and then put the face back on, as the gradient will kill it.
I hope that helped~