Hi! Not sure if this will help you because I tend to redraw my entire horse but here goes :)
the first thing I do is trace and fill my base layer like normal. This is the solid base colour I want the horse to be.
Then I do my shading and lighting-usually I do three layers of each.
Then I simply remove my base layer and play around with shading & lighting layers until I like it!
here's a few examples of me just removing the base from some of my works

Hope this helps a bit!