How should I colour this picture?

[nerulean]

Hey arts forum! I haven't been here before, but I have now hit a conundrum and need to appeal to you for help. I can't play a character without a portrait picture and I've been drawing my latest (a bhuka spirit shaman) for several days now, and come across a snag. I have no idea how to colour this picture.

I know I want to go for real contrast in the picture, with the magic swirly being very bright and the only strong light source, and minimal ambient light. The real problem I've found is that I have no idea what I should do with the colouring of the magic itself: I don't normally play casters, so I don't normally draw them. Help!

The picture isn't very big, but it's just over the width limit and I'm not waiting for photoshop to load up again to resize it, so it's under a spoiler tag. I'm working with photoshop 7 and absolutely everything is on a separate layer, so re-colouring is easy as pie.

http://i4.tinypic.com/71phveh.jpg

Any suggestions you could give would be greatly appreciated, and if you can include examples with pictures of what you're suggesting, I'd love you forever.

[Dihan]

The colour of the magic is fluff so it's entirely up to you. Though I tend to associate purple with Illusion magic. As she's a Spirit Shaman you could apply a bit of motif to the magic that's dependant on what her spirit guide is. However, you probably don't want to do that.

Anywho, I'd personally go for a light grey, though. I think it would seem more spirit-like.

[nerulean]

I think I'm sticking with purple. The picture isn't going to remain in flat colour like this, I plan to shade it, and what I'm really after is tips for shading swirls of glowy magic light, oxymoron though that request is.