I don’t think I’m waaaaay ahead of you in shading tbh. Your shading just wasn’t dark enough in your earlier stuff but when I zoomed in I could see it and it looked good. I was thinking you had better shading then me.
And for shading I take into account the shape of the features. If areas are roundish then they will kind of have a C looking shadow on the shaded side. Straight features obviously get a straight shadow. Muscles and facial features have different crevices that hide light it is just a matter of knowing them or, like I do, reference a picture with the feature your drawing and hopefully with the light source in the right direction. Been bending my hand this way and that trying to get the lighting right but might have to take pics as references.
My next piece will be close to a 3/4 view of a Frostwolf Orc Shaman with his wolf and the clan banner behind them while they are in a battle. The orc is going to be my attempt at one of my own toons and even took some screen shots for references. The wolf will probably be the hardest part with all that hair and not sure what to reference on it since it is a dire wolf and not some normal wolf. Don’t want my wolf to look like a normal wolf just larger tbh.
Anyone that uses Twilight as a vampire reference or as the core of vampire movies NEEDS to watch some other vampire movies and totally disregard that pile of crap. I understand there are fans of it but it is not even what I call a vampire flick it is more of a teenage love flick then anything, BLAH. Pass!
I didn’t want to delete any version because if the San’layn community liked one version over another I would have to go back and redraw it. Wasted time imo. Plus, as you can see, I am changing it quite often so if I messed up the newest version or didn’t like it I’m up sh!@s creek without a paddle, lol. And I will be changing it again. I think I’m going to try her holding an orb and the bat’s wings opened. We’ll see if that works.
If you saw my 1st attempt at digital art it was just a scan of my ogre drawing that I cleaned up and quickly tried out some things. It took maybe 4 hrs and was just to get my feet wet.
Fast forward and this vampire elf was suppose to be the next step on my trip to learning digital art. I was expecting to spend maybe double that amount of time just trying to draw what I’ve drawn. But the more I worked on it and changed it the more I wanted to make it better.
If I had stuck with the original idea of that female elf in male San’layn armor I probably would’ve just done 4 - 8 hours of work and moved on. It is because I changed her look and because it turned out so well that I kept going and now look at how long this trip has been. It’s been 40+ hours and I’m changing it again, lol, and it isn’t even into the detail stages.
After this piece is finished I have to learn how to use masks in Krita because that could’ve saved me about half the time I’ve spent on it. Allows me to select certain areas and I can color the whole thing and even if I go outside that area it does not color anything else. That is very handy and better then zooming in like I do so I don’t go outside the lines.
I also would like to learn how to make my art look good without lines. I draw black outlines but I keep those and though it doesn’t look bad I really like the art style where the different shades of color create your outlines and shapes.
As always, thanks for the very kind words and encouragement. The San’layn community is a rather enjoyable one to be apart of. Wait . . . . who said that? Lol, JK. I support San’layn and I am “not an elf fan”. 
)
And they draw like I hope to and that is without black outlines or with as little as possible. Right now all my stuff is outlined. I also need to find my style. Plus, that background is probably my favorite color besides black, which some people say is not a color.
can Blizzard please take note of this request