Coloring/Shading help needed

[Kami]

Guys, I have problems with coloring and shading, which discourages me from drawing. I have started coloring here:

But I dont understand where the shades are suppoed to drop and how to determine what color will be shade?? I just cant understand it... The arrow indicates where the light is coming from, or from what it looks it seems that it is coming from there... Maybe with scatering it is too complicated to start? Maybe I should just try and do cell shading and use ~2/3 colors for each object? Any help will be appreciated.

[chocojax]

Breaking down the complex body parts etc. into simple shapes help a lot. And for me, adding a grid onto a 3D object and imagining it also helps me think about where the light hits and where it doesn't. Another way of thinking about it is "what can the light 'see' the most from its perspective (lightest parts), and what can it not 'see' the most (darkest parts)?"

It feels like cell-shading will help out the most in learning how2shade since most of the time, it forces the artist to work with darker shades -> learn about variation in shades, etc. But everyone learns differently, so just experiment with cell-shading quickly and compare the two.

Attached drawing was made really quickly+more dramatic than you were probably looking for, but hopefully it helps out.