Daria

Sea Slug Plushies

Thank you so much <3

There were so many places where I learned color, but I hope I can recall the most important ones

Noah Bradley’s youtube channel has helpful videos on doing studies. Robotpencil does too, and I remember how his tips on value helped me a lot. Leyendecker, yes, him too :) and Alphonse Mucha has good colors. James Gurney’s book on color theory was also a tremendous help. 

Learning the fundamentals and practicing them allows you to maintain that strong grasp of the basics while also doing other stuff like stylistic ventures, etc. I always say that I have to know how to draw well in order to paint well. Drawing, like with lines, is the most basic and important of art techniques for me. 

Fundamentals (for me): anatomy, value, color, composition, drawing, realism (in terms of anatomy, and maybe the other stuff too) 

I like a combination of analogous, complementary, and chromatic neutrals in my pieces. One or the other is typically the light and shadow, so for example if my overall palette is warm, the skin would be some warm color and the shadow would be either the complementary of that (desaturated) or the chromatic neutral. I believe it can be interchangeable at times.  

Generally, if I have orange light, I will have a desaturated orange or a very desat. blue, the complementary, as the shadow. You can switch it up with the analogous colors of either dichotomy, so orange light + desat. purple/desat. blue/desat. green for shadows, and vice versa, etc. 

One more example, blue light + warm shadow, i.e. desat. orange/yellow. 

Dividing lights and shadows into warm and cool, or cool and warm, is a good starting point for me. 

And just as important to keep in mind is value. A good placement of value and color makes all the difference!

Hope this was informative! 

Sure, I got some tips for you :)

For those who are unfamiliar,

This is the asaro head! It’s a great starting off point, but it doesn’t look like it shows all parts of the skull, but I suppose that’s the result when you’re simplifying something complex, as the head is. I think it’s very good for showing how the head is shaped in a way that is easier to grasp, but I also wouldn’t rely on it solely for learning the head, since it doesn’t detail everything. I believe there are other kinds of plane heads, some more specific than the Asaro head, or less, and it might be good to check those out too, if interested!

(Such as this one, it’s more specific in that you can more clearly make out the form of the skull and it’s landmarks, but at the same time not every human head looks like this; there are advantages and disadvantages with these, but that’s to be expected)

taken from April 2018 tutorial reward.

Full version (up to 18steps) + Step by Step videos (‘Drawing and Painting Shelves’ total duration: 11min 54sec )

Oda Nobunaga with her younger brother Oda Nobukatsu and *cough* her future girlfriend Okita Souji from Fate/Grand Order.