Hey! First of all, before you start painting, always make sure your drawing has a solid foundation. You should already understand the forms and the perspective at the drawing stage. Doing this will save you hours of painting later on. Many beginners skip this step because they're eager to start rendering, but without proper planning they often end up spending hours trying to fix problems as they paint. That's why a strong drawing is the key to a strong illustration. When you begin painting, keep things simple. Start with a color block-in of your character. Choose your color palette and apply it, making sure the values are clearly distinguishable and have good contrast. A common mistake is to add color while keeping all the values too similar, which weakens the overall value structure. After that, create a shadow map. Block in the major shadow shapes based on the direction of your main light source. It's crucial to establish where the light is coming from, you can even draw an arrow to remind yourself of its direction. As you place those shadow shapes, think about the underlying forms. Visualize everything as simple cylinders, boxes, and spheres. This is exactly why it's so important to understand the forms during the drawing stage: it makes the lighting process much more straightforward. From there, it's up to you how far you want to refine the painting. You can continue by adding core shadows, ambient occlusion, bounce light, and other secondary lighting effects. But even if you stop after the shadow mapping stage, you'll already have a solid foundation to build on. | Artwod Feedback