Darigan Kougra Art Help

[le_diable_blanc]

Ok so I finally decided to draw my darigan kougra and to use my computer (and photoshop) to color it. That's a first so it ain't great but whatever
So I drew it and all but now I have problems with "shadowing" since i have no idea where to start / how to do it.
Here's the drawing so far:

Opinion, comments and piece of advice welcome! Thanks ^_^

[Ziggy]

The basic idea with shading is showing where the light hits and where it doesn't. First you have to define a light source; where is the light coming from in this picture? Once you know, the areas which are closest to the light source are lighter and the areas furthest away are dark. Also, where the light would be unable to hit, you shade darker such as the inside of the leg or on the neck where there would be shadow cast by the chin.
For an example, in your pic, the leg closest to us (her left) would be fine as is if you like, but the other leg would be darker because it would be shadowed by the leg closest to us.

Shading is hard, I still have trouble figuring out to shade and where not to. Without a 3d model infront of you, its hard to know where the light actually would hit. I observe real things as much as possible and lots of times I think 'I'd never in a million years have guessed the light would hit there'. But it does. Usually, I may not know exactly where its supposed to go when I begin, but I know what looks right and what looks wrong. A lot of it is trial and error, I might draw in a peice of shading and see what it looks like, I'll keep it if it looks good but try again in a different place if it looks wrong.

[chickvw]

I like it, but the only things I see so far are:

1. The tail thickness needs to be a bit more consistent.. there at the bottom of the curl it seems to get thicker for some reason.

2. Front leg... the shoulder should be wider than the leg is right by the paw.. like Ziggy said, it's hard without a model.. I'd swipe your or your neighbor's cat for reference

But don't mistake my comments for dislike, I really like the piece and the custom style of markings and such.. it's awesome, can't wait to see it finished!

[le_diable_blanc]

Thank you both for the comments and advice it helps a lot
So I gave it a first shot and that's what I have so far:

I didn't know what tool to use on photoshop so I dunno, it could probably look a lot better.
But i think the tail looks better now. As for the legs, I like the fact that it's wider at the bottom

[Ziggy]

Seems to me you're using either the lighten or the dodge tool to do your shading, which isn't always the best tool to use. Its easy to use which is why a lot of beginners use it, but it has a sort of 'cheap' look to it. It CAN be useful but only if you know exactly how to use it. I only use it very occasionally.
Still, its a viable way to shade if thats the look you're going for. Personally, I prefer cell shading where you take your base colour and knock it up a few shades to make it paler )in this case, a pale purple) and use that to show where light hits. Similarly, take the purple down a few shades to show the darker areas.

[le_diable_blanc]

Well I really had no idea what tool to use so I tried a couple and this turned out to look the best. (I used (B) (brush?) then (R) (water drop?) - sorry I have the french version so I dunno the exact names )
Cell shading sounds great, but I dunno how I would do that.

Edit: Added shadow and fixed a couple of little bothering details.