How to Draw a Triangular Prism

Triangular prisms are three-dimensional shapes that are composed out of two triangles and three rectangles. When they're put together, they form a shape similar to that of a tent or swingset. This article has some helpful steps to make shading them a breeze.

Steps

1. 1

   Draw a triangular prism. They're fairly easy, to draw, and you don't have to use a method that shows all three faces. Simply sticking a triangle onto the shorter side of a rectangle will work if you have the proportions right and you can shade it to look 3-dimensional.

2. 2

   Determine where the light source is. This is crucial for any shading project. Without a light source, the shading won't make much sense. It will look like we were making oblong shapes with grey instead of giving it that 3-D flair.

3. 3

   Shade with three tones. In this simple method, we use three tones: Light tone, mid-tone, and dark tone. These are pure white, pure black, and your choice of grey in between. The grey doesn't have to be neutral. You can add a bit of warmth or cool depending on the effect you want to achieve.

   • The light tone should be closest to the light source, the mid-tone on the face receiving some, but not all of the light, and the shadow on the face opposite to the light source.

4. 4

   Use a gradient. You can do this by altering your pressure. Press hardest where you want the shadow, and barely press at all for the highlights. Blend this to the extreme with your finger, tissue paper, a tool, or something else used for blending. There should be no distinction between areas of the shape. Instead, it should flow very smoothly from one shading extreme to the other.

5. 5

   Crosshatch. Crosshatching is drawing lines upon lines, each layer going in a different direction. The closer your lines are and the more layers you have, the darker that area will be. You can represent crosshatching digitally with a half-tone layer.

6. 6

   Make the faces different degrees of mid-tone and darken the areas where the lines meet. Shading vertices is a common tactic used to make drawings pop out at you. Be sure to make the mid-tones match the positioning of the light source, however, as you do not want this to look flat.

7. 7

   Shade in strips. A pro for using this method is that you do not have to blend. Simply mark off sections and color them. A con of this method is that if you do not get the lines exactly right, the shape can look warped. However, you can use this to your advantage by making it look like an optical illusion, or whatever you think is cool.

8. 8

   Use colors. Instead of deliberately creating different tones, color the faces of the triangular prism colors that already create the tones in proportion to each other. An example could be peach, (light tone) grass green (mid-tone) and navy. (dark tone)

9. 9

   Invent your own method, or make a combination. Maybe you decide to crosshatch colors or use three different gradients as three tones. The possibilities are endless!

Add New Question

• Question

  How do I draw a triangular prism?

  

  Undertale4141

  Top Answerer

  Draw a triangle. Draw another triangle exactly like it near it but not on top of it. If you're on a digital program you could just duplicate your triangle and then move it. Use lines to connect corresponding corners of the triangles to each other and then erase the parts that overlap.

Ask a Question

200 characters left

Include your email address to get a message when this question is answered.

Submit

About this article

Thanks to all authors for creating a page that has been read 9,339 times.

Did this article help you?

martinbary1965.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.wikihow-fun.com/Shade-a-Triangular-Prism

Share this post