Being a cheepscate and in general just having a hard time deciding what art program to use, I’ve developed a process that should work on just about any art software. All it needs is the ability to use layers, and Multiply and Overlay layer modes. That’s it. In this tutorial I’m making the sketch in Mypaint and the color is done in Gimp, but you could use anything. You could even do the drawing on paper and scan it if you want, it’s all in your hands!

Ok, let’s begin:

Today I want to draw Terezi from Homestuck. I start with her head, an action line, and the tilt of her hips, which helps to get an idea of the scale of the image on my canvas, and lets me plot out the flow of the image.

Next I rough in the limbs, the neck, the position of the hands, and any props. This is that famous “Stick figure” that art teachers talk so much about. It’s more like a really stylized skeleton, but whatevs. It’s a fast way to work out pose and proportion.

Time to put some meat on those bones! Here I add in all the forms of the body. Books on anatomy, pose websites like “Posemaniacs” and that kind of thing can help you learn how to do this. I also rough out where things on her face will go and other little details like that. Still really rough and general though.

New layer time! I make another layer on top of my sketch now and grab a medium tone like this red, and start “inking” in my lines.I add detail as I go along. I find doing the details on the fly rather than drawing them in my sketch then “Inking” them keeps the lines fresh and lively feeling. I also noticed her arm was a bit wonky and fixed it.

Delete or hide your sketch layer and you now have a nice clean lineart layer to play with!

Next I go in with an eraser tool and clean the lines up, then I go in and darken some of the lines, concentrating on the side opposite where I want the light to be coming from, and working on making an overall 3D appearance.

The next step is to toss on another layer and set it to “Multiply”. I then take lighter shades of my line art color and start laying them down with a soft edged tool to shade. You could also do this with a hard edged tool for a more “Cell Shaded” look. Be sure to keep your light source in mind! It sometimes helps to draw a little sunshine!

I generally alternate between my fuzzy brush, the soft setting on an eraser, and a smudge tool to gradually whip my shadows into place.

Next I start filling in darker areas of my drawing (in this case her hair, glasses, and clothes) with a darker shade to act as a base for the shading to come. It can be helpful to keep smudges of your colors around to eyedrop from rather than trying to muck with it while you’re trying to do something.

If you’re trying to fill things in neatly in a program that doesn’t have the option of using a selection tool, such as Mypaint, it’s a good idea to tackle the edges of the area with a small brush, then fill it in with a bigger one once that’s done.

All filled! yay! :D

Here I grabbed an even darker color and hit just the darkest darks, like the shadows of her hair, and the folds on her clothes, and the shadows where the light goes through her glasses. The shading on top of the glasses will make it a breeze to make them look shiny later.

Next I grab a slightly lighter color and start highlighting, including a thin strip on the edge opposite the light source, to give a sense of bounced light. This adds to the sense of 3 dimensions and makes the drawing more interesting to look at. I also throw some highlights on her hair and glasses.

Ok, as luscious as all that red is, and as much as it helped with shading, we don’t need it anymore. We need black and white. So flatten your image and drop that color out like it’s hot. (Most programs have a way to go to grey scale. You just want it on this layer though.)

toss a layer on top of this and set it to overlay. Then take the color you want each area to be, and color over with it. This will tint your lines and shading, which gives you a head start on the color step and just looks good.

Lookin’ fly, T.Z.

OK, now pop another layer on top of everything and set it to multiply. Start painting in your colors.

Thanks to the colored line/shading layer, you get a head start with the shading. I sometimes just stop here.

If I want to do more, I’ll toss a layer on top of everything and set it to overlay and paint highlights in using colors that I like for the light. I used greens on this one to bring out greenish tinges to her skintone.

Here it is with the layer set to normal so you can see what I did:

As a final touch, I put on one more layer, set to normal, and used a very small brush to paint in the tiny white highlights, and some reflected light.

I hope all this was helpful! Happy Art making!

PS: You can actually do something like this using real media by doing an “under painting” like our line and shading layer in a waterproof media such as acrylic, ink, or colored pencil, using watercolor over that to add the actual colors, then highlighting with white acrylic!! :D

Filed under submitted line form lighting submission color

8,389 notes

April 14, 2013

wannabeanimator:

Tips on color & light from The Artist’s Guide to Color by Wendon Blake

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Filed under color light lighting coloring

474 notes

April 11, 2013

patchesdraws:

Rambling about color zones of faces.

When I work with a dead layer (the greyscale or a monochrome underpainting to get values and the general gist of the painting) my favorite part is right after laying down the first colors of the skin. It just looks neat to me. Even when using photo reference I don’t really like just drawing it exactly as I see it. Deeper colors that are more stylized is so much more interesting than just copying the reference. If I just try and do exactly what I see I think it tends to look flat and dead :P

I’ll lay down a wash of ochre, burnt sienna or other orangish/brownish skintone base on a layer set to “color” or “soft light” if it’s not some kind of crazy lighting. (Otherwise I might lay down the color of the surrounding light first and build up skintones from that. Depends on how I feel.) I usually end up with a few layers set to various modes to get the colors laid down. It just takes some fiddling and practice. I don’t think I ever do it exactly the same way twice.

Then go in a lay down what a professor of mine called “the apples” of the face. How much red appears in the face all depends on the person. Someone like Mr. Bates here tends to have a sort of “jolly” look to him so I’m making him look very kind and soft by accentuating his nose, cheeks and lips with my “apples”. Now if I were painting someone like Thomas, I would only use enough red to not make him look dead since Thomas isn’t exactly a “warm” character. >.>

Yellows and oranges for the forehead and sometimes on the upper lip area on girls does the job. These areas are easy to make look too flat and pale otherwise.

Blue, grey, green or purple on the lower half of the face. More pronounced on men then women. It can be really subtle on a lady but an easy way to get a five o’ clock shadow on a dude! (I should have put it more on his upper lip too…)

Then I’ll flatten it all and go in to paint “glazes” in varying opacities and layer modes on top of this to get the final painting and a realistic blending on the skin. Laying down the basic underlying colors this way helps me keep faces looking fleshy and alive. I also do it on the rest of the painting to be sure there is a unifying feel to the colors.

I’m still trying to perfect it and there’s more than one way to skin a cat, but I really like working this way for portraits most of the time. It really reminds me of oil painting which I don’t really do anymore. P:

(Last image has the saturation pumped up to accentuate the color zones as an example. I probably won’t actually work on it at that level because he may look like he’s glowing lol.)

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Filed under faces skin lighting

3,808 notes

December 5, 2012

pauflip:

ruem:

euclase:

pausing from drawing to do a tiny lighting demonstration for the anon.

i’ve marked the major light sources. YELLOW is the strongest. PINK is the same as yellow (the sky, basically), but it’s coming in at a steeper angle, so it’s not as strong. the place where pink and yellow meet is where you’re most likely to find the “natural” color of the person you’re painting. forehead, collarbone, on either side of the bridge of the nose, etc.

the BLUE is the reflective lighting.

in this case, it’s false hollywood lighting. if you look in misha’s eyes, you’ll see white reflective dots. those dots are actually the reflection of one of those big white cards you sometimes see on film sets (i have no idea what the official term for them is). film crews use them to reflect light up into actors’ faces so you can see them better.

if i were using a difference source photo, the BLUE might come from water, a bright sandy beach, or even the shirt the person is wearing. it’s secondary light reflecting onto a person’s face from something else that’s being illuminated by the primary light.

i hope that helps? any place the light isn’t touching is the elephant graveyard where the hyenas live. so don’t go there.

just kidding.

those are just the darkest places. under his hair, inside the hollows of his eyes, under parts of his chin. the hollywood lighting card thingys are meant to get rid of those shadows, so misha is actually really well lit in this shot. :)

Very good resource, and I approve of the subject used. :)

Those big white cards are simply called reflectors. ;3 Most are flexible so the light can be directed easily - there are also gold reflectors to provide a warmer light where needed.

In direct sunlight a sidewalk will actually reflect a substantial amount of light. It’s quite common for there to be under lighting in outdoor situations by way of reflected light from the ground.