Kamryn's Sketchbook

[Kammiechaos]

One book that touches on composition, shading, and portraiture is Color and Light by James Gurney. It's not an in-depth technical treatise though; it will be most beneficial if you are very poorly versed in those topics and need a dictionary. For portraiture in particular, Drawing the Head and Hands by Loomis might be what you're looking for.

There are some good free resources you can look at first though. Here's a list:

James Gurney's blog, which might actually contain all of the information that's in his book, so have a look at the relevant categories: https://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/

David Briggs' site. Most of it is very technical and not directly relevant to making art, but he has a short and sweet page about light and shade that you may find helpful: http://www.huevaluechroma.com/021.php

The good ol' PSG art tutorial. I haven't read the whole thing in a while, so I don't know if it's 100% technically accurate, but it helped me out when I was even more of a n00b than I am now, so have a look: http://androidarts.com/art_tut.htm

Wow, thank you so much for taking the time to give me specific links and books. You have been beyond helpful, I will get right to reading them. I wish you the best in all of your art endeavors.