Shade the Right Part of the Top Lettuce

Now, we can finish up all of the shading for this top layer of lettuce. Start with an HB pencil.

Very lightly, shade a base layer over the remaining lettuce leaves.

Next, grab a 2B pencil.

Sketch some shadow tones at the top left corner of the sixth lettuce leaf. Put more emphasis just under the bun and to the right of the fifth lettuce leaf.

After that, gradually transition the graphite from the darker areas to a lighter and lighter gradation. Just as before, leave the edges even lighter than the middle.

Then we can work on some of these curled edges.

Shade some planes of the curls while leaving others alone.

Put more shadow tones where one leaf meets another.


Let’s go to the 4B pencil next.

Outline the top edge of the lettuce where it meets the lower edge of the top bun. This outline will be the foundation of the dark cast shadow under the bun.

Here, I’m outlining some of the other edges that will border this shadow area.

Fill in the area surrounded by the dark outline. We want deep, dark tones here.

Now, use mostly horizontal strokes to shade along the edge of the bun, gradually moving away from the edge while lessening the amount of graphite on the paper.

Keep looking for areas that could benefit from having dark tones next to lighter tones.

Switch to an HB.

We can use the HB over what we just shaded to further soften the transition from dark to light.

In addition, I think it’s pretty cool how some carefully placed dark tones next to light can create some nice, realistic effects, like this fold in the lettuce.

Like we did before, we can soften the tones around the edges with a kneaded eraser.

Then we can use our pencil to make those edges sharper and clearer and then blend them in with the other surface shading.


Okay, we are ready to finish up the lettuce in these next few steps!

Start adding the veins to the lettuce leaves. Draw lines from the dark shadow underneath the bun to the lower edges of the leaves.

We can draw some more veins branching out on the right side.

Then draw a few more on the left side as well.

We’ll put one here on this flap, too.

Draw some vein lines on the final lettuce leaf, going up from the lower edge.

I’ll use my eraser here to clean up the edge where the lettuce meets the bun.

Here, there’s no shadow separating the lettuce from the bun. Since they are similar in value, I’ll use a sort of reflected light band to separate the bun from the lettuce.

I’ll do something similar here above the fifth leaf.

Then sharpen the edge with a pencil.

Now we have all of the lettuce shaded or at least all of the lettuce on the top of the hamburger!

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