ahh thank you so much! ♥ welcome to the digial art scene friend, i hope you enjoy your stay and ctrl + z
now onto your question! (if you don’t know what layer and layer modes are and how they generally work you should probably google that before you continue reading)
we all perceive colour differently (thx science) and i trust my intuition a lot when it comes to colour picking because of that, and also because i feel like you can make pretty much every colour combination work within the right context. context is key! but still, remember that all of this is about how i perceive colour, so you might not agree with everything i say.
here’s a quick rundown of terms you’ll see around a lot in reference to colours and shading: the hue, which is the ‘colour’ itself, the saturation aka the intensity, and the brightness [or value] which describes how dark or bright we perceive a colour to be.
rule of thumb: when you shade don’t just add black (or white) to your base colours, that will make your drawings boring and lifeless. use different hues and saturation!
now first things first: which skin colour does the character have?
you’ll mostly be navigating in the red to yellow spectrum for the skin tone. so when i pick the base colours i usually start with the skin and adjust the rest of the colours accordingly. if you’re not sure where to begin it might help if you first determine the values (brightness) of the base colours in grayscale.
and here are a few colour variations—i stuck to the approximate values but played around with a lot of different hues and levels of saturation.
now compare 3 and 5: you’ll notice that 3 is very bright and leans towards orange hues, whereas 5 has a pinkish tint.
on the left i gave 5 the hair colour of 3 and in my opinion the pink hue of the skin doesn’t go well with the orange undertone of the hair. you’ll have to experiment a lot to find out which combinations work for you.
ctrl + u is your biggest friend (or image >> adjustments >> hue/saturation in photoshop, the shortcut works in sai and clip studio paint too). play with the sliders and see what happens. i do that a lot myself, because it’s easier to coordinate the colours like that afterwards instead of trying to manually pick perfectly matching ones right away.
for further adjustments i like to use an extra semi-transparent layer on top of everything with just a single colour to add atmospheric light. this unifies the colours and makes them more harmonious, if that’s what you’re looking for. this is about as far as i’d go if i didn’t want to shade the drawing.
if i do want to shade, especially with high contrasts and dramatic light, i darken the base by just adding an additional black layer, here set to 40% opacity. of course you could add a colour layer like the ones i mentioned previously too.
to create an impression of dramatic light you need a high contrast between light and dark areas (1). if i want additional visual intrest i often add secondary light which falls onto the main shadow areas. here i picked a faint greenish blue to balance out the yellow (2). and since light is at least partially reflected when it hits a surface you should add a faint glow that goes across the shadow/light border (3).
for this shading style i like to use the layer mode colour dodge with lowered opacity + fill settings. for some layer modes opacity and fill do the exact same thing (e.g. for multiply or screen). however for colour dodge there’s a big difference:
a lowered opacity merely alters the transparency of the entire layer. that looks pretty awful sometimes, because the bright orange affects the dark of the hair much more intensely than the already brighter skin. but when you lower the fill percentage you primarily lower the amount of light that falls onto darker colours. so the layer’s opacity setting treats every colour equally whereas the fill setting takes their values into consideration. it might be hard to understand if you don’t try it out yourself, so just play around to get a feel for how it works!
and to summarise, here’s a process gif:
colour is an extremely big topic and i’ve only barely scratched the surface but i hope that still helped you out a little! the fastest way to learn is always to try things yourself, so grab a sketch and experiment. 👍
It’s taken me forever to answer this and I’m so sorry but here’s a quickly garbled nonsense post about expressions!!
Although to start here’s a couple of links to far more helpful tutorials here and here.
There was also this awesome chart that I’m having a hard time trying to find. I thought I had tagged it, but apparently I can’t remember the correct tags for it so I’m just gonna rehash what it was essentially about separating the features and adding them with each other to get the emotion you want?? god I wish I could find the original thing but um here’s my quick version
I feel like there’s so much I’m skimping on but I guess I should point out that the reason why I’m pointing out the entire expression is because each of the features of the expression helps contribute to the eyes feeling more expressive.
Just the slightest adjustments can really affect the overall attitude and effect of an expression. I highly recommend studying how other people draw expressions AS WELL as drawing from your own face.
Have fun with it and play around as much as possible! <33
I’m reblogging this for two reasons:
1. @madidrawsthings is amazing and her work should be seen by all.
2. I was asked forever ago to do a tutorial on how I draw facial expressions and I totally never made one, though I meant to, because when I sat down to create one I realized how complicated it was - but she made it super clear! Not only that, she has a VERY similar approach to mine, especially her focus in these drawings on the stretch and compression of the face over all. Seriously, I love this!
So I hope looking at her awesome stuff helps anyone who’s curious how I draw facial expressions.
So I know art block can be as bad as eating a handful of Needles sometimes so let’s give you a shit ton of ideas I’m going to come up with:
1). Make a villain that would be your antagonist.
2). Make a simple shape, like a square, and stylize it with eyes and teeth etc.
3). Make a hero/heroine that is you, or who you want to be
4). Vent art is always good.
5). A nightmare you had as a child!
6). Whatever in the world would be the scariest hint to you!
7). Your own set of deities.
8). Your Image or images of an angel.
9). Your image or images of a devil.
10). A demon that isn’t fiery.
11). Someone else’s character with their permission of course! And remember to give credit!
12). Something you don’t like to draw!
13). Your favorite character.
14). Your favorite character as something else, like a log cabin or a bear made out of leather.
15). Your favorite season! The embodiment of it!
16). Someone who has affected you greatly, in a positive or negative way.
17). A fusion of two + animals!
18). Find images of bones and draw the flesh onto them!
19). Your favorite feature!
20). Your own character for a video game, TV show, movie, etc!
21). A character with an object for a body part!
22). A feeling.
23). If you draw realistically try an abstraction, if you draw abstractly try realism, if you do both, sway to one side for a day.
24). Draw your mind.
25). Ask for some requests from friends!
26). Pick 3 words from the dictionary and draw the result!
27). Go outside, pick 3 things, draw the fusion. (I may do this myself!)
28). A ghost.
29). A movie monster!
30). An old friend.
31). A gone friend.
32). Clothing!
33). Animals, just pick one and go!
34). Something boring!
35). Try to fill a page!
36). Try with your non dominant hand, and if you’re ambidextrous use your foot.
37). Try a new medium! Like paint, sculpture something!
38). Stop trying and go for a walk then come back and try again!
39). Your favorite food.
40). Your favorite foods favorite food.
41). A pun, like a visual pun.
42). Something silly!
43). Play a song and draw the song.
45). Aliens.
46). Make a paper airplane
47). Draw fire, water, or any other element.
48). Research a culture and try drawing in their style.
49). A myth or a legend you know!
50). Make a comic (this one is hard trust me).
51). Draw the back of your head without looking.
52). Draw a butt.
53). A pile of something, like feet.
54). Gore
55). Something a child would like.
56). Something controversial.
57). Propaganda.
58). Your future home.
59). Your future.
60). An imaginary friend you had or still have.
61). Your favorite toys come to life.
62). Someone with every characteristic you like.
63). Your pets.
64). An eye.
65). Try drawing in a new style!
66). Open a magazine and draw what you see!
67). Draw on the magazine!
68). Draw an album cover.
69). Something romantic.
70). Something really really old.
71). Draw something or someone you’re passionate about!
72). Draw a character inspired by someone.
73). Find a word in another language and draw it!
74). A thank you card to someone who deserves it.
75). Your favorite place.
76). Draw somewhere on your room where no one will see it.
77). Draw your deepest secret.
78). Draw a vehicle!
79). Draw something you’re looking or not looking forward to!
80). Draw a shell.
81). Draw life.
82). Draw death.
83). Draw a ship if you want to.
84). Draw what you want most.
85). Use something like juice for paint!
86). Make a fairy home! Then draw it with a fairy inside!
87). One of my favorites, make a boat out of stuff you find on the ground and see if it floats! Then draw it!
88). Draw your house. Or just where you sleep.
89). Draw something you want changed in this world.
90). Draw something innocent.
91). Draw the 7 deadly sins or something like that, like the 3 laws of _____ or whatever!
92). Draw your oc doing something good and bad. If you don’t have an oc pick whatever!
93). Draw a character from something you don’t know about!
94). Draw a world.
95). Draw some artifacts.
96). Draw the person you love most.
97). Draw the person you hate most as beautifully as you can and then as horrifyingly as you can.
98). Draw the sky.
99). Just scribble.
100). Redraw an old drawing!
As people repost this feel free to add your own to the list! I’m sure people will be happy to get as many ideas as they can! I hope this helped and keep making art!
requested by ion4ever. sorry it took me so long to do this for you but hopefully I was of some help?
Notes:
I use CS6, and this was mostly done with default hard round brush at around 50% opacity or higher, 100% flow, and size pressure on. I made some random brushes for the greenery by modifying the default ones.
always use a large canvas. I go about 3000px x 3000px.
with enough practice, painting backgrounds like this will be a fairly quick affair. this one, for example, took about 30 minutes? it’s just a matter of time/experience. :)
So yeah, good luck doing backgrounds, and have fun!! :D
every time I reblog this my sister sends me a message to the effect of “thank u for reposting that cat video on your tumblr i have seen it so many times but it delights me every time because their paws are so gentle and graceful”
