Coloring and shading advices?

[mlgg_21]

Hi everyone! I think Ive been like for 2 years now making my visual novel, and err Im going like SLOW, very. Im always good at lineart but then, when I have to add shades and color I block. Since I always draw in paper I know how to shade ''comic or manga style'', with lines, butI want it to be modern, and that is with color shading... any advice or tutorials? Also, If anyone finds a mistake in the face, body, hair or anything point it out, Im too perfectionist and this is going to be my heroine... Please ignore the colors in the picture, I just took them randomly, any advices for hair color and eyes will be good, I thought about her hair being black but since his face is already a ''resting b***h face'' haha, well, I wanted to make her more vibrant.
Also she is like caucasian, so I thought ginger will be good... I dunno. Im writing, scripting, making the sprites, eveeerything by myself while I get used to draw with the wacom... soo Im a bit tired
Thank you in advance everyone!

[CatPalismia]

I suppose that you know where to place shadows and highlights, so I try to help with making them colored. I'm not sure which kind of shading style you want, so take my words with a grain of salt. There isn't any wrong way of shading and my advice concerns mostly the traditional visual novel CG style - or in another words, a style I try going for.

With that said, I would suggest trying to make the saturation of the highlights and shadows lower.
- The middle colors (aka the base colors on your art) have the highest saturation and value is in-between highlights and shadows.
- Shadows have lower saturation and the lowest value.
- Highlights, on the other hand, have low saturation but the highest value.

Shifting the hue to be different gives a life to the drawing. For example, if the hair is ginger, you can shift the shadow color to be little more red and highlight yellow - or the other way around.
It's more about testing what looks good though! Color picking a picture/digital drawing you like and studying how the color's value, hue and saturation change on the color wheel can be helpful. Studying others' colored art can give many different ideas how to use colors differently or how others do shading.

Good luck with and hopefully I helped even a little! <3

[puppetbomb]

What program are you using and do you have an example of what kind of coloring style you want to try to emulate?