I am planning a rather large, ambitious picture, and I want it to look very good. Some aspects, I have a good idea of how I'm going to do it, but there are some things about it that I'm just innately bad at and would like some tips on. Those things are:

Shading in a room, namely a white room-- walls, floor, ceiling. How do you depict light on a flat surface without making it look monotonal, boring, or overly textured?

Realistic skin shading-- How do you use single pen strokes to achieve good light and dark spots without it just looking blotchy? Is there a better way? Should the base color be lighter than the skin tone? Darker? The same? Should I shade first and then add in the base tones? I've watched several animations and then tried those techniques, but it never works. Maybe some step-by-step directions would be a good thing.

Hair-- I've looked at hundreds of tutorials and I fail every time. How do you make it look like thousands of individual strands without drawing every one of them?

Clothing-- Especially wrinkles. How does one go about doing wrinkles without getting that anime-ish cell shading effect?

These questions go out to the 2draw elite. Those of you whose drawings we peasants look at in the showcase and can only dream of aspiring to. Those of you who, by simply drawing a stick figure cartoon, can make the rest of us want to smash our tablets, burn our pencils, break our fingers, and never draw again. Yeah, you know who you are. Please help make Taori's next draw a memorable one. Any help at all is greatly appreciated!

Well, I dunno if I can help you with everything, but the clothing topic caught my eye.In my art class we just did some drapery with tons of wrinkles and what you do is you have to depict which wrinkles are deep and which aren't.You also have to take a good note of what type of shapes are formed from the wrinkle.Using a ref, you could squint at it to bring those shapes of darks in each wrinkle.But mainly when you draw wrinkles, you need to have a good variation of dark darks and light lights.You can make a dark shade just under and over the wrinkle and start using a gradience outward from it (yes, and some wrinkles have very fast gradience so you'll have to watch out for those.).Ex: maybe if you had a wrinkle that was shaped as an upside down "U," you would make sort of a dark bomerang shading beneath it and keeping the ends of it pretty dark, you can pull the gradience from the top to bottom (dark to light).That would definitely separate it from the anime cell-shaded look.If you need any further specific help with this, feel free to drop me a memo.I'd be more than happy to try and help you out :).Good luck.

yup, it's a good idea to start practicing with a reference. You won't get it the 1st time but just pay special attention to the colors.Colors help make shapes so make sure you try your best to get them down. If you don't have an art teacher, become your own. Anyways, just pick a few referances and study them 1st! Then practice I'm not talking about studying them for 2 or 3 minutes. Try spending at least 30 mins and keep track of the things you're not familiar with (I think that's the best part about references is learning new things). Post some references here if you want some pointers from us. I'm sure some of us would be glad to help out. :)

what they said, but id say watch some animations on good drawings. like this. theres some good skin texture/hair stuff going on.

Yeah yeah... im not elite or anything but i just wanted to say, that your Hedwig picture looks pretty realistic. Use those steps, i wish i was half as good as you. :)

I agree with Mazi, the animations are what got me hooked to this site...I learned so much from animations alone. And ditto to the practice thing. And the take extra time thing. *shrugs* What do I know. :D Good luck with your drawing, I'm sure it will rock.

Well, I don't really think I'm "elite" either, but I can give you a definite tip; skin is not completely peach! Use purples, yellows, greens...it mostly depends on the lighting. But if you look at Kasha's stuff, she uses definite colors other than pink.

And as far as lighting, if the light is one color, then the shadows are the complementary color. I don't really employ that technique, but it's proof that I do listen in art class. So, if the light was yellow, you'd have purple shadows. If the light was green, you'd have red shadows. And so on.

Thank you, everyone! Rocking advice. I really appreciate it! XD