Tips and tricks for shading

All artwork up there is mine. The first one is Eos's redesign, which hasn't been uploaded yet and is still sitting in my documents waiting to be finished. The second picture is [link] and the third is [link]

Just FYI: when shading Eos, I really didn't pay attention to fur or muscle shapes at ALL. It's just to show you where to shade, more than how to do it.

This has a bit more than just tips for shading; it also has highlights, brushes, sharpening/contrast, and those little backlight things that I don't even know the real name of.

I think it's sort of self-explanatory. But this is the way, for the most part, that I do MY work. It's just a bunch of tricks that I use often and find to be helpful; you probably have your own methods and you probably find that some of mine don't work with how you draw and color. On the other hand, maybe you find some of these useful or interesting and decide that you want to incorporate them into your style. If you do, then that's awesome, and I'll know that I'll have helped someone out.

One thing I didn't mention on here is the use of layer styles. You know, like overlay, soft light, multiply, etc. My shading usually is put on a MULTIPLY layer, and is NOT black. Black just makes the picture look more flat. I take a color that goes well with the highlights I'm using (like on Lucas it was purple shadows against orange/yellow highlights). Using color to shade really adds an extra layer to the finished picture.

Everything (c) me.
If it's helped you, I'd love to know. ^^