This is a very flexible technique that can be adapted to shade pretty much any simple dress, skirt, or set of mage robes.

Remember Shay, who appeared at the beginning of the last tutorial? This is how I shaded her dress. The only "extra" in that shading was figuring out where the shadows needed to fall to make it look like she was lifting up her skirt. You will learn that from practice and from observing how light falls around you (and a little trial and error!) - here I will explain all of the technical tools you will need to achieve it.

This is especially cool if you are used to using MSPaint, as shading large stretches of fabric is very difficult with pixel-shading.

See Preparing Your Workspace. You will save yourself some time if you go ahead and bring in the base along with any palettes you plan to use.

Get the base onto its own (transparent) layer and use a separate white-filled layer as a background.

Use the dropper (or "color picker") tool to pick up the darker shade that you want to use to outline the dress.

On the Tool Options dialog, select Sample Merged. This will allow you to pick up whatever color you see, even if it is on a lower layer.

You will now see your chosen foreground color at the bottom of the toolbar. You can click on it to go to the palettes and mess around to get a shade you like better if you prefer. You can even keep two colors out at once - if you click the little arrow between them, you can switch which one is active.

Now grab the pencil tool.

On the Brush Selection dialog, choose the smallest brush, the 1x1 "circle". For dolls, you always want to draw with a tool that is one pixel in size! You will want to use the same brush for erasing.

Sketch out the outline of a simple dress. It can be a bit messy at first. I like to trace over the bust line of the base so that I can keep track of where it is.

Use the eraser tool to get the lines down to no more than one pixel wide. You can fudge a bit for a really large base, but for smaller bases this is really important!

Be sure to go to the Tool Options dialog for the eraser and select Hard Edge. Otherwise it doesn't erase completely, and you don't want that!

Hint: Think about how it would make sense for the fabric to fall. Gravity is going to make it tend toward straight drops to the floor, but depending on the stiffness of the fabric, the pose, or the motion of the subject (or the wind!) it may still stick out a bit.

Get a slightly lighter color using the dropper tool again.

Use the pencil to fill in around any openings, such as where the hands are.

On the Layers dialog, bring up your white background layer so that it is directly under the dress layer.

We're preparing to flood fill the interior, so this is a good point to check to make sure you didn't leave any openings!

Choose the bucket fill tool and under Tool Options select Sample Merged.

Make sure you have your dress layer (not the white background layer - I can't tell you how many times I have done that) highlighted on the Layers dialog and fill the inside of the dress with color.

At this point, if you are used to only MSPaint, you are crying tears of joy at how much easier that was. ;)

Now go for the dodge/burn tool. You will want to choose a slightly larger brush, depending on the size of your doll. I like to use the "fuzzy" circles for all but the most detailed of shading.

You will want to get to know the settings in the Tool Options for dodge/burn very, very well. They are your new best friends. They can serve you well.

Exposure tells you how light or dark the shading will be. You will usually not use very high exposures since you typically want subtle shading.

Dodge makes things lighter and burn makes them darker.

Mode changes how things are made lighter or darker. Most people ignore this setting. We can do better! (You'll want to play with these a little to see what I mean.)

Do your shadows first, using burn. I like to use midtones for my shadows when I can. (Note that for lighter colors, if you're using midtones you tend to need higher exposure settings.) Play around with the exposure settings until you get something that does not contrast too much with your dress color but is still visible.

Paint one dark stroke all the way down each side and one under the bust line. This layer is transparent, so don't worry about going over the edges (you can't darken transparency). This step does not need to be very precise.

Pick a smaller brush and do the same thing, this time being careful to stay to the outermost edges. Think about where the darkest shadows would fall. Adjust the exposure settings if it looks too dark to you.

Think about other places where slight shadows might fall, such as under crossed arms or hands on hips. If you have a hard time imagining this, try standing in front of a mirror with the light on overhead!

Use a lighter exposure setting and a smaller brush, and add some extra shading touches.

Soft shadows can imply slight billows in the fabric of the skirt. A bit of shadow over the bust line implies that the dress is hanging from its straps.

Remember to keep it subtle. Also note that when you one dodge/burn stroke overlaps another, the overlap is slightly darker. You don't always want that. Can you see how I started just below the bust shadow to avoid that?

Finally, we are ready for highlights. They are best if used sparingly - it is easier and more effective to get most of your lighting effects with the shadows. A lot of beginner dollers naturally assume that shadows and highlights have equal importance, and perhaps they do, but highlights stand out more so you need less of them!

Select dodge and change the mode to highlights (the mode that brings out the color best).

You want one highlight above the bust line. That one can typically get away with being a little brighter (particularly if you have already "burned" there a bit). For the highlights along the skirt, I used a lower setting, about half the exposure.

But wait! That's not all!

Remember how we included the bust line when we drew the outline of the dress? You don't need it anymore. This is a step that many people overlook, but it is easy to see that when you get rid of it by coloring over with colors from the same area, it looks much better. (You can do this in Paint if you prefer.)

Add hair, of course (unless you are making a fashion statement!), and those extra touches that make it all come together, like shoes and maybe a necklace and bracelet.

You can do this all in Paint if you are more comfortable working that way, or you can make new layers for the hair, face, and accessories.