Okay… I’m sorry, but as an illustrator, I think this is terrible advice. This is my opinion, feel free to believe that I’m wrong. This is purely based on my experience with color and color theory.
1) The don’t color with black thing is valid to an extent. Most painters will tell you not to use it or to use it sparingly because black will make things look flat and will heavily desaturate your colors if you’re not careful. I have a problem with telling new artists “DON’T SHADE WITH BLACK OMG NEVAH NOT EVEN ONCE” because there are valid times to use black in shadows, and when you do that, you are telling them that using black is “wrong”, which means they’re less likely to experiment and try new things. I prefer to say, “as a beginner, try to shy away from using black to shade anything until you learn more about color theory. Experiment by all means, but here are some other methods that you might like better.”
2) Telling an artist, especially a new artist to only use a specific color when shading is terrible. I equate it to giving a math student a formula to plug in on tests, but never telling them what the formula actually is or why they’re using it or why it works. It’s an absolutely terrible way to teach someone- especially in art.
There are also so many different ways to color and shade with digital art, telling someone to do it one way is really limiting and not really giving them the best advantage that they have, which is versatility. Plus with painting, there are SO many things to take into account besides the color of the shadow that is going to affect what color the shadows should be- you have local color, relative color, reflected light, and so on.
Here’s some quick and dirty tips on what I do to shade in my paintings:
A) Color wheel- decide what color the shadow is. The most common shade for shadows is ultramarine blue (for those who don’t know, it’s a staple paint color for traditional artists) for natural lighting, but experiment, experiment, experiment! Once you decide on a shadow color, pretend there’s a line going straight through the color wheel dividing it in half. If you use Ultra Blue, the opposite color is MOST likely going to be yellow depending on your art program, colors in your painting should move toward Ultra blue equallyish (there’s lots of room for fudging, do what looks best!) Yellow will be a bit of a toss up depending on your painting and executive decisions as an artist. But basically orange will be shaded with a darker shade of red, red with purple, green with teal, teal with blue, blue is like yellow, dependent on your painting and executive decision. You might choose an indigo, or something warmer (more greenish/tealish) might suit your painting. Experiment! The same works in reverse for painting things lit by direct light AND reflected lighting.
B) Blending Layers- Sometimes you want your shadows to be consistent across the board and don’t want to have to figure out exactly how each color should be altered. Using a multiply layer with a color on it (and it can be any kind of color depending on what kind of lighting you’re doing) can help you manage your values and keep things from getting disjointed. This also allows you to change the color of the shadow if you decide it isn’t working out quite how you wanted it to.
C) Quicker and Dirtier- Sometimes you just don’t want to do any kind of figuring anything out. You can take the flat colors of your painting, copy onto a new layer, and then adjust that layer’s hue, saturation, and value to find shadow colors that you like (and you can experiment with other color correction tools, don’t be shy, try new things!). Once you have a good shadow color, create a blank layer mask on the layer and then erase out bits of the mask to get the lighter colors to shine through.
And remember, if the colors look flat when you’re done, saturation is generally a way to breathe more life into things- Shadows don’t have to be just one layer, you can try doing multiple effects and layer multiple colors to achieve the look you want. Is the green shadow looking a little flat? Try putting some yellow down in an Overlay layer and see if that’ll help it pop.
These are only three of the MANY ways digital programs can help us create art. Experiment! Try something new! Don’t be afraid to mess up, that’s when you find the hidden treasures you didn’t know were there!
Now, all that said, if you have not yet, I strongly encourage you to learn some color theory. Understanding how light behaves and how colors are affected by that and how they interact with one another is something every artist should (in my opinion) take the time to learn. There are a lot of great free resources online that cover color theory and lighting. Google is your best friend! Take advantage of your access to these resources, please!
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