I have attempted many many shading techniques over my years. Some more complicated than others. But this one sticks after a series of trial and error during the 2024 Draw Everything June event hosted by Adorka Stock.

The technique focuses on the use of the color wheel or color theroy. Sometimes its a series of trial and error, but if you pick your colors right, you got a pretty sweet rendering that fits the theme and tone.

The technique goes as follows:

I Start with choosing 3 colors. One light, one dark, and one inbetween. Mainly from the color wheel, but that can change depending on the area or theme of choice. Example: A drawing with a night and full moon would have heavy use of light blue and dark blue. Or in indoor stadiums, I use heavy uses of orange and yellow to resemble the spotlight as you would see in my other works. For the color wheel, I normally use Cavana's color wheel. https://www.canva.com/colors/color-wheel/

(Note, in some pieces, I choose two colors. It will be detailed in the next step)

Second step is to assign the colors. The lighter or warmer colors are assigned to light, middle color is ambient shading, and the darker color is set as the more intense shading. In some cases, I choose two colors and proceed to mix the two to form an ambient color, or middle color if you will.

Third step is to start applying the shading.
- I start with the first shade on a multiply layer, which is usually the ambient color.
- After that I set up a new multiply layer for the darker shading to color in darker places.
- once the shading is done, I move to lighting up remaining parts with the warm or light colors on a screen/add/lighten layer. Note unlike what the pic suggest, I overlap the shading and lighting together.
- same is said with layers with the layer for shines or rim lighting.
- Last step is to cover the layer with an overlay gradient. Note, the gradient can be linear or sphere. And I also suggest to take time to decide where you want to put the the gradient so it doesn't cause an imbalance of value. (this part is where most of the trial and error takes place)

And right there is how I shade...or at least how I used to shade. I will set up a tutorial on how I shade these days. Its one of those "Easy to learn but difficult to master" sort of technique. But its a start.