How can i make fabric folds look more realistic with better light and shadow?

[Victoria97]

I've been trying to get better at drawing realistic fabric, but I keep making the folds look stiff and unnatural, like carved plastic instead of soft cloth. I think my main struggle is seeing how light and shadow actually work on all those different creases and drapes.

[Victoria_G]

I get it. I used to chase clean, crisp lines and then wondered why the cloth still read stiff. I remember watching a real shirt in daylight and noticing how light sort of blooms around each crease, then pools in the hollows. I tried sitting with a sample and shading the big shapes first, letting the fine creases fall where the light wasn’t fighting them. It didn’t fix everything, but it softened the look.

[Brian_H]

I’ve found that weight matters more than texture. A heavy drape behaves differently from a thin scarf, and the light wraps in surprising ways around the curves of a fold. I once spent a session comparing two materials side by side and kept flipping between them to see where the shadow went, and I still felt off after.

[Emily88]

Do you think the problem is the lighting, or the way you’re judging the shape of the folds, or maybe the shadows are subtler than you expect?

[Stephen61]

A ramble: I drifted into trying to render the weave under a crease, then pulled back to the big silhouette and the rim light. Not sure if it helped, but I slowed down enough to notice how the light travels along the textile rather than stopping at a crease.