Today we're going to be learning about heart edge versus soft edge and how they're used to create photorealism and hyper realistic drawings. It's one of the most essential topics that you need to learn in order to create realism without it. You won't get anywhere. The term heart edge and soft edge are used to describe two different ways an object can be shaped in your drawing. First of all, a heart edge describes an edge of an object that is usually well defined. So there's a strong sense of where it ends. So a soft edge is drawn so it disappears or fades away like a gradient. Let me show you guys some examples of what these look like in my portrait of Jim Carrey. So you guys can learn how to identify them and apply them to your drawings. First of all, we'll change the portrait of Jim Carrey to black and white. That way we could see the tones a lot more clearly. One of the most common mistakes for beginners to make is to draw an outline exactly like this in their drawings and see that's a problem. If you're trying to create a realistic drawing, this is going to make it look really fake. The reason is there are no outlines in reality. So if you look at my face, you can see there's no cartoon outlines defining the boundary of my face. What some beginners will do is shade this in, then draw a line, then shade the neck in, and this is what makes drawings of cartoony. There are some artisers that do that on purpose as a stylistic choice and it can look incredible. But if your goal is to mirror reality in a realistic way, then this is not the best way to do it. That line you see on the chin of Jim Carrey is created by the contrast between the dark tones on the neck and the light tones on the chin. Those two different tones meet and create that line you see. That line is called a heart edge. Another example of a heart edge, you can see the black shirt and the skin on the neck. They meet and create a line. That's another example. Now let's have a look at the nose where the dark shadow meets the light tones up here. That creates another heart edge giving the nose its shape. Here's a tip for you guys. Things that are darker tend to appear further away from you. If you look at the shadow under the nose, you can see how it looks like it's receding away from the screen while the light area on the nose appears like it's coming bit towards you. That is what's creating the depth. Those are examples of heart edge. Now let's have a look at soft edge. If we have a look underneath the chin of Jim, you can see a dark area and on the right side you can see a light area. That transition from here to here is what you call a soft edge. It goes from dark and slowly transitions to light, giving the neck a bit of shape. Another example, you can see underneath the cheek there is a dark tone and the edge of that tone is not well defined if you have a look up here. See how it becomes softer and lighter the further away from the dark tone you get. All the way up until the lightest point of the cheek. That soft edge transition is what helps create the illusion of shape of the cheek. Over here on the side of the nose, it looks like we have an area that is receding away from the screen. As I mentioned before, dark tones make it appear like things are further away from you. Then I've used a soft edge to sort of blend it back into the light parts of the drawing, sort of connecting them back up. Set up a abrupt transition from dark to light. I've used a soft gradient and between the eye brows you can see a line but that's actually a hard edge. I've shaded up from it going from dark to light and you can see how that gives it the illusion of depth. You could almost imagine running your finger between the eyebrows and knowing the shape and how it feels and for the last example right down here is an area where the dark and light area meet that contrast between these two and the soft transition between them is what creates the illusion of the flesh bulge. Anyway, I hope you found this helpful. Thank you so much for watching.