RR Shading Experiment (Patreon)

I'm getting close to drawing the last picture in this image set (but fyi, if you guys have suggestions for what you'd see from this Rubber Raccoon, let me know because I have a couple) 

Like one idea I had was that I draw them wearing a T-shirt that says "Daddy's Little Slut". And Another one would be a tube top with boy shorts, where the top reads "You're not immune to Propaganda" and the panties read "Propaganda" 

BUT WHAT IS THIS?, I'm gearing myself up to color. And everyone knows, that I don't color. Have you seen me color before? No you haven't. Do dreamt that. That didn't happen. 

So I need to figure out something I haven't done in all 15 years of me drawing furry art. And I need to figure it out fast. But after doing some research and watching some videos, I've got an idea.

Rather than just laying down color. I need to test the material I'm working with before hand.

Please direct your attention to the two balls at the top. One is the result when I do an image search for a black rubber ball. And the other is a version that I painted myself. It was a gray circle a dark spot. Then I added 3 dots for highlights before blending it all up. the process was shockingly easy, and the results were a good approximation of the real world thing.

I next copied those balls and move them down to their ass cheeks, arranging them over where they might be in a final picture. (Now am NOT playing on cutting and pasting my colors all over, this was just to speed things up for this experiment.) I then adjusted the brightness and contrast, before applying a "difference layer", that makes the lights one color, and the darks into the opposite color. Breaking away from the monochrome pallet. And I think it really looks good! :O

So my plan is, to first do some practice paints over simple shapes that will appear in the picture. Spheres and cylinders mostly to see how the lighting would look before hand. Thus creating my own reference to apply to the raccoon. I don't know if it'll work but if it works even half as good as what you see here, then this may be the way to go.

If you want, if you have suggestions for... shiny stuff. Like here I'm going for a rubber, but those highlights, the number of lights, the color of those lights, possibly even the shape of those lights could be changed around entirely.