I participated in a creature design challenge for November and decided that that'd be a fun chance to push myself to experiment with blending modes and do rendering & finer details to a degree that felt pretty daunting. That said, I'm so glad I did this, and I learned SO much in the process, especially about blending modes! Hard Light was really fun (but also delicate!) for getting strong highlights, whereas I found Add was a fun blend mode for highlights where the color of the reflecting material would be influencing the color of the reflected light (like the antlers and hooves), which also made me think more critically about additive rather than subtractive color and how to pick the right colors for the blend layer to get the results I was looking for. Similarly, I ended up noticing more the subtleties of using Multiply, such as how using any bit of saturation can have a much larger effect than I would've thought when it's on a fairly desaturated base layer, and so that's something to be careful with for more subtle or smooth shading but nice when I want to make shadows also influenced by bounce light or ambient light. I never thought to use it this way before this piece, but putting an Overlay layer below the shadows and highlights let me put in color gradients, midtones, etc (such as the subtle glow from the fungal fruiting bodies) in ways that influenced but didn't really disrupt the shadows & highlights. Overall this was a super fun learning experience!

Since I didn't do proper lineart, I added basic rendering after the blending modes to make it less flat. I am not sure if I want to do concept art but still very useful tips, especially the effects with linear dodge and ctrl u to change hue. Just saw that I forgot to redefine the bowstring.

i was excited for this lesson on blending modes. although i can't seem to make peace with that double edged brush, it ends up making "dirty light" for me, not sure why (i have the opacity ~70%). i started with that double-edged brush for the shadows but then had to go back in with the round shader and airbrush... lots of soft erasing shaping, eesh. i'm still trying to figure out light on form. i used a reference from gokurakugai (in black & white).

It took me some time but here is my attempt. It really does feel like magic to see a character come together after giving form to a flat drawing, especially when you have to trust both yourself and the process in the beginning stages (when things don't look so great). I will definitely return to keep using these techniques again and again, and the amount of potential seems huge.

An original character design for a friend. Tried to colour with these methods and it was really an eye opener. Would love any feedback. Using Krita, and still trying to find a brush with a soft edge and a hard edge. Also, not sure how to rotate the brush to control the direction of the hard and soft edges. I may be missing something in my setup. I am using a Surface Pro 8, with latest version of Krita. Thanks!

Here is my attempt to draw something similar using techniques from video.

Now I'm wondering if it might be worth it to take a break from this to try Dorian Iten's Shading Course you mentioned and come back after it. My shading is currently only okay at best.

I get so lost and overwhelmed with colouring, more like starting how to colour. This lesson is exactly what I need and I'm excited to go deeper with more advanced stuff, especially when it comes to rendering materials and polishing up. So thank you :D