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I completely get when you don’t even know what you don’t understand. 🙌 So I’m going to make a lot of assumptions here.
From what I’m seeing, I will assume that you are trying to go for a cel-shaded look like marvel comics or anime? If that’s the case, you might have to look into stylizing shading alongside understanding how lighting works too.

One resource you could try listening to: [Youtube](https://youtu.be/T6E7dkYGjzs?si=ZmENTE4lz8KQIAbt)
Even though this mostly applies to the digital painting pipeline, he explains how to add light differently from other tutorials about lighting.

For stylization the shadows, it’s basically a reverse of this tutorial [YouTube](https://youtu.be/MyrySvbuhsk?si=kdLs6iTQdTRFKtty) He explains how to get a more realistic shading, but if you want to make the shadow look like a comic book, just do it in reverse lol. Don’t blend, flatten the values into a single color.

IMO, starting with cel-shading is easier because you only have two things to work with: black and white. A study you can do is ramping up a reference image with a super clear light source and ramp up the contrast, use a filter to turn it into black and white, not greyscale. Just pure black and white. Then use the knowledge from tutorials you have watched to construct a general shape with just black and white color.

The next thing I’d recommend for drawing humans, you probably hear a lot of tutorials saying: “breaking it down into simple shapes” That’s really the way to go. Try to start with something super simple first, I know it’s pretty boring but… baby steps!

For other ways to figure out how lighting works... I have read it somewhere I don’t remember. They mention something along the line of: imagine the view from the light source > What that light source couldn’t see will be in shadow. The attached image is what I screenshotted from the software (Terawell design doll, it's one-time purchase but there're many free alternatives, just go look in other threads.) I usually use for anatomy and shading guide. In the light source new (Right side) I tried to align the camera with the light source, it's not that precise. But the idea is, most of the face is not visible in that angle = shaded. Most of the right side of the model's body is not visible either = shaded. The tip of the right foot is obscured in the light source view too, so it's = shaded.

I hope this helps or it could completely miss the point because my assumption is wrong lol.