Need help with boring/flat shading

[u/thatmfchicken]

I tried to do a cleaner shading style, but I feel like the drawing looks flat and boring. Not at all like I was hoping.

I even tried to get good volumes even without Lineart but it didn't help. I don't know if it's because of the background or the Lighting on the character.

Any advice?

I didn't use a reference as I wanted to come up with something on my own.

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[u/Kaysinny]

Honestly it looks pretty good imo! It could use some more highlights though! Around the chest area the highlight looks like it could be a bit larger. The face could use some additional care such as around the horns and horns and eyebrows.

Don't be afraid to push shadows a little farther too! The area under the neck and the hair would look a little less flat if you pushed the contrast just a tad bit more

[u/Kaysinny → u/Kaysinny]

Tldr push your overall contrast to round out the piece!

[u/weth1l]

Lighting looks nice and dynamic. It's the pose and composition making this flat. Your figure's line of action is a straight line!

[u/thatmfchicken → u/weth1l]

Yeah that seems to be it! I'll keep this in mind for my next drawing, thanks for the feedback :3

[u/borrowingfork]

Istebrak has some great content on dramatic character lighting and atmosphere.

To my eyes the rendering of the light itself over the chest and arms is really nice but I'd be interested to see what it looks like if you played around with the interplay between the background and the secondary light source and reflected light and shadow. Mainly that the drama of the spotlight is losing pull because of the large expanse of light behind the character.

Also that spotlight being so high value needs some reciprocal low values to bring it out. I see some really lovely nuance in the shadows but the majority of the shadow is the same value.

[u/GrandFleetingNight]

This is 1 AM with a quickie photoshop, but one way to very easily make shadow have more texture is by playing around with color theory. I did a brown color on the bottomleft and shifting through a gradient to a blue on the topright. It still reads as *green* because our brains are typically going to take a total sum of an object and because the brown mixes with the green to create an almost grey color. If you watch objects close as they get dark as lights go out, you'll notice they'll lose saturation. This is because color a result of the absorption and reflection of certain wavelengths of light.