On my end I had it happen just once

Oooh so that's what you teased when you announced that you were leaving HiRez, I was quite curious 👀 That's awesome 😊 wish you the best at your new job And I second what Nicole Drews said, pretty much sums up my thoughts

Hey @Nicole Drews ! I'm still an apprentice so don't take my word as gospel but I wanted to sprout my opinion here. The first time going through a process like this is always confusing, but I've tried it on a few more paintings by now and it definitely gets easier. Also, over time, you will naturally think of ways to simplify / change some steps and make it more intuitive to you. On Ambient Occlusion. I was also taught that at first, but no, AO doesn't only affect crevasses. A lot of artists just simplify it that way. AO is a trick used by 3d softwares. Whenever two objects are close to each other, it gradually darkens both and often (faintly) affects a large part of an object. The darkening is not linear, but accelerates with proximity. Along with ambient light, it is what gives the illusion of form "in the shadow side". When rendering an image, a 3D software will do an "ambient occlusion pass", rendering all the AO on its own, to later add it in the final render. Checkout "3d ambient occlusion rendering" on an image search engine to see some examples It is mostly visible on forms illuminated exclusively with ambient light, hence its name. It is negligible / "invisible" on forms lit by a direct light source. Marco Bucci has 2 excellent youtube videos on ambient occlusion/light for painters. If you're interested, he will explain it far better than I did. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fLV5ezO64w and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwLQ0cDb4cE Anyways. We're not 3d softwares and there's no need to do an actual AO pass. The goal of this layer is to create the illusion of 3d form to trick YOU to help you make better decisions in the following steps. Also, stylisation plays a big role in how dark and how much shadow you want to put. So, keep in mind the theory. But cheat, have fun and experiment. Even Jon mixed some form shadows with AO. And he put AO in places that would be lit by the light source, as if they were halftones. Finally, I wanted to give some feedback on your assignment. On the positives : Overall I think you placed the shadows pretty well. I like your work on details. I also like your balance of soft and hard edges. On things to improve : The figure in your painting feels quite stiff. I know, the reference is just as stiff. In similar situations, here's a few ideas of things you can exaggerate in the future :  curve the skirt (I overdid it in my assignment, you don't have to go that far)  curve the folds on the skirt  rearrange the folds so that they give a feeling of "pointing towards the face (focal point) from different angles" (don't make it too obvious either)  spread the feet (I just copied Jon for this lol) Also, to me (personal taste), I think you are overusing "black". In most lighting setup, the "shadow side" is illuminated by ambient light. I suggest you give it a color and pull your shadows towards that color instead of pulling them towards black. If this is confusing, checkout the 2 videos from Marco Bucci I mentioned earlier. Hope this helped :-)