Soft/Hardbrush Shadows and Light

i have seen lots of people talking about brushes and crap...and this is what i mean by adding light and shadows with a soft or hardbrush (default photoshop brushes)

This is not using a brush to add lighting or shadows:

[IMG]http://img.photobucke*****m/albums/v470/Chronologix/Sig/hokagenl.gif[/IMG]

This is using a Hardbrush for shadowing and a Softbrush for light:

[IMG]http://img.photobucke*****m/albums/v470/Chronologix/Sig/hokage.gif[/IMG]

The brushes are not set to a different blending mode.....for the shadows i just used a hardbrush to place shadows where they look like they should be and lowered the layer opacity to 60-70%

and use a small Softbrush to add light to areas that look like they may need light and also just lower the layer opacity...you dont need to set it to overlay, or lighten or any of that. (but if the lighting layer brush looks too sharp then apply a blur to it to make it blend over better and erase areas where hte light shouldnt be)