aha well if u look at the link in the description you can see it took an awfully long time lmao. my first skins were basically just copying other peoples skins in order to attempt to learn to shade.
ive always really struggled with shading - ive finally got it only recently!
learning shape of skin came from entering in lots of peoples reshade contests - by seeing how other people made certain shapes i could recreate this and adapt it for my own skins. Most skinners skins are a weird jumble of everyone elses lmao
I learnt to shade hair by looking at other skinners and how they shaded hair, copying it and developing it (mines mostly based on aquarine's hair shading)
for shading the body ive always really struggled, but i learnt that with shape really its just working around the shapes; areas around where the second layer sticks out should be darker as theyre in shadow! learnt a lot of my shading off of top tips from Jasmine_ (ty jas!) such as like really understanding the way in which certain areas are very dark such as between the arms and torso and between the legs.
i used to hue shift but now use black at a low opacity to shade!
for colour i first create a palette then take a colour from that palette and cover the entire thing in that colour at 50% opacity! Makes all the colours all come together and match even if they originally clashed!
the black and white i use to shade are the black and white from this palette with the overlay - using harsh black and white makes skins often look very tacky!
soooo top tips:
1) enter reshade contests theyll massively help with learning shape
2) really actually think about where shadow will be - rather than focusing on whether ur shading is 'simple' or 'complex' focus really on 'this bitd be darker than this bit'
3) use more than one variety of shadow - i use 21% opacity black - the darker areas are from going over it 3 times and the lighter bits going over it once!
4) dont be afraid to copy other peoples shading styles and adapting them (with credit to the skinner!) this is how you learn!
5) play with colour! overlaying is the thing i always do, but learning colour theory is very helpful - enter a couple of palette contests!
6) have fun with it! making skins because you feel like ugh god i have to isnt fun, especially when ur drained for ideas
7) dont compare yourself to ur inspirations - instead see them as inspirations to draw from!

hope this helped lmao (took forever to type dont mind my horrific grammar)