Hi, so I was wondering if you could help me with digital art a bit. This is one of the first paintings I’ve done and I don’t even have a tablet. I need help with shading so could you give me some tips regarding that, and any other things you see wrong with it. Thanks in advance (:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
So digital art is a tricky beast. Part of getting good at it is figuring out what exactly works for you. So my first advice is figure out exactly what sort of textures, brush strokes and otherwise seems right to you. Practice a lot with the stuff and eventually you will figure it out.
Anyway as for the shading. What you have here is rather flat shading. Your idea of light source and direction is good, but human beings have many crevices and hills to explore. If you shade them in the fashion you have here we can't see all the fun wrinkles in the subjects clothes, nor the curves and structure of the muscles on the body. Yes, the subject is female but even the softest ladies have structure. So try and work those in. Clothes wrinkles are probably the hardest thing you'll have to figure out, but its fairly easy to find references for this style and you can even use your own body. As another note on shading part of the reason this looks kind of flat is that the colors from light to dark are pretty much on the same gradient of the same tone. Shadows tend to be very blue, while highlights tend to be yellowish. So the best way to shade is to make a color more blue the darker it gets.
As for the actual form itself it is fairly solid. I think the biggest problem I have to it is that the lineart is all one thickness. I know you don't have a tablet but you can change the brush size. If you vary the thickness of the lineart you can make it a lot more interesting and it can really make your art pop. Finally the patch of skin on her leg confuses me. What is that exactly?