After shading the hair and face, I moved on to the headdress. I wanted to go over how to color orbs and give them that nice glowy appearance. ^_^ Glowing orbs can look complicated, but it is really quite simple to shade them. Start off by creating a dark area in the center of the orb. I had inked mine in when drawing, which probably wasn't the best of ideas, so I use the smudge tool to smooth it out a little before continuing. ^_^

Use a darker shade of the base color to extend the shadows in the center of the orb, as well as along the bottom rim of the orb. Use as much or as little detail as you wish.

Next, just add a few round highlights in the area where the light is coming from. To give the orb an added shiny-ness, I put a few more shadows around the largest highlight, and painted on top of the highlights with a very soft white airbrush. See? Its not that hard. To get the shiny effect, just add several layers of shadows and overlapping highlights. :)

Start adding shading to the other, more detailed areas of your picture, and make sure you keep the light source consistent. Remember to use several layers of highlights and shadows to make the picture look more three dimensional and rounded. I recommend using at least two or three different colors per layer.

Color in the rest of the details. Remember that the more layers of shading you use, the more three dimensional it will look. However, you have to make sure that you put them in the right place, or it won't make much difference how many shadows you have.

Remember at the beginning of this tutorial I said that adding color to the outline can give your picture a nice touch? Well, now you can try it out and see for yourself. :) Go back to the outline layer, make sure the preserve transparency is checked, pick a darker version of the color you are going to paint around, and color the outlines. For the hair, I used a darker blue; for the skin, I used a dark brown. What this does is make the outlines less prominent, but still give the edges the proper definition. Compare this picture with the one directly above. Do you see the difference? Its very subtle, but trust me, it can make your picture look much better, especially if you are working with thicker outlines.