Shading equals blends with polymer clay.
There are possible elements in a cane: snakes, sheets, and blends.
Snakes for dots
Sheets for lines
Blends for sharing or gradation of color.
With those three elements you can make just about anything in the 2D surface
of a cane.
Here are some links:
 http://www.norajean.com/Biz-Archive/Blend-Grp.htm
That page has links to blend experiments from my first three years of
hosting this group.
 Here's
some screen shots of blending by hand:
http://www.norajean.com/EpsonAlbums/NJ-Epson/HandBlend/Index.htm
 When
colors are blended loose, not all the way, you can get some interesting
effects:
http://www.norajean.com/Biz-Archive/ColorCards/Samples/Card-008.htm
 The
loose blend is what I use for eyeball cane:
http://www.norajean.com/Biz-Archive/Sculpt/Eyeball/008.htm
 Once
you blend two colors you can "fan fold", like how we made paper fans as
kids:
http://www.norajean.com/Biz-Archive/Flowers/PurplePearl/Main.htm
 Or
one could do a jelly roll with a blend like we do with the tiger cane:
http://www.norajean.com/Biz-Archive/Faux/Tiger/Blend-Tiger-Grp.htm
 slice
that jelly roll blend and insert black for tiger stripes:
http://www.norajean.com/EpsonAlbums/NJ-Epson/Tiger-2002/001.htm
and
 http://www.norajean.com/EpsonAlbums/NJ-Epson/Tiger-2002/002.htm
Or you can take that jelly roll blend and bury snakes
in it to get spots on a shaded background, like with this stargazer lily.
http://www.norajean.com/DemoStuff/05-15-04-StarGazerLily.htm
 Change
the color of the background, change the color of the snakes buried inside
and you can get a leopard effect.
http://www.norajean.com/Biz-Archive/MSAT/ClayArt/WebCam/DemoPix-018d.htm
 Ok,
let's take that jelly roll blend and turn it inside out:
http://www.norajean.com/2008/11-23-Tear-Drop-Bead/Index.htm
and
 http://www.norajean.com/Biz-Archive/food/Banana-Natasha-grp.htm
 Here's
a rose in brown shades and blends played a large part of that cane
construction:
http://www.norajean.com/2007/03-03-BrownRose/Index.htm
 You
can use non-nature colors as a blend to make some weird leaves:
http://www.norajean.com/2009/01-07-Blends/Leaf.htm
Not only can you create shading with blends you can also create highlights:
http://www.norajean.com/Biz-Archive/Chiaroscuro/Preview.htm
Miniaturists would be well served to study the chiaroscuro web section. When
miniaturists need pipes, radiators, shiny metal surfaces that have
highlights and shadows, blending in the highlights and shadows is a good
bet. Room boxes might not have the right lighting, the metal pipes might not
cast enough shadow or reflect enough highlights to serve the purpose they
were intended. Yeah, I know this is an obscure tangent, but I find it
fascinating. LOL
Blends give a lot of clayers THE FEAR, but blends are your friend.
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