Hello, all you artists!

Let me first say that I am NOT an artist. I don't have any training or anything, so please forgive my bad artwork I am about to show you.

I am working on a digital painting of a roman soldier wearing a gold laurel wreath on his head. I've got the basic shading of the face down OK (though it is still kinda muddy and light), but I am stumped as to how to shade the gold leaves. I am using a reference for the face, which is how I kind of know how to shade that. The laurel is completely my own, and I don't even know where to start.

Here is part of the WIP image. Please note that the leaves are not completely colored in, just so I can tell where one leaf starts and one ends before I do the shading. Finishing the coloring right now would just make things harder.

Does anyone have any suggestions or tips on how to tackle shading these gold leaves?

Thanks so much!

To keep the whole flow, I would suggest using reds or purples to shade the leaves. I think reds would look better and work well with the brown tones you're using. Usually when I want to test shading I use multiply layers. New layer - place it above the the coloring layer - and set the layer setting to multiply. Most art programs have layer styles, at least I know for sure that gimp, photoshop, sai, and manga studio do. That allows you to play with tones and colors, and then usually you can lock the shading layer and color over it with different colors to decide what looks best. :)

edit: Ugh, somehow double posted. :(

Thank you for the tips! I would not have thought of using red and purple. I usually just shade with the dodge/burn tool, but then again, I don't know what I'm doing. xD Not using dodge/burn will be nice, though, since I will be able to have a separate layer for it. I'll give that a shot!

Now I just need to figure out WHERE the leaves need to be shaded. That's another place I'm stuck. I want to be able to show that there are separate leaves. You can see my poor attempt on the bottom left leaf. Since the light is coming from the top (I guess?), I'd think I'd want to shade the bottoms of each leaf, along with the place they overlap?

I've seen some artist draw arrows in the perimeter to mark the light source (in red or some other noticeable color and then they remove them in the final stages). You can have more than one light source and they can be differentiated from each other by different intensities or hue, but most artist stick to one primary source with ambient light (otherwise the side opposite the light source would be incredibly dark as it would be completely in shadow).

In your case, the left side is darker than the right, so that would imply that the primary light source is off to the right. I would also say it is somewhere toward the top corner on that side though the shading does not strongly suggest that at this point.

I'm still learning about shading myself, but a lot of it seems to be about instinct (what looks right or wrong) and using references to learn the planes of the face and how light hits them... Two tutorials I was able to find in my bookmarks: The more detailed of the two but lacking any studies of light on the diagonal The first image on the left in the grouping of six similar sized busts appears to have top right lighting somewhat like your image

For the laurel, you have to imagine the leaves' three-dimensional shapes and the three-dimensional shape of his head... All of the laurel leaves will be darker on their bottom left (if I am right about the direction of the lighting) and the laurels to the left of his head and the bottom of the wreath will be darker than the ones on the right and at the top.

Anyway, I do hope I've helped you instead of making things worse... Shading is not an area which I have any real confidence or skill in yet.