Doodle Book

Some people have asked me for this tutorial too, I know that a few informations here are pretty obvious, but I just thought they were valid to include, and it can or cannot work for you, I just hope you find this helpful in someway :)

★ Body Type Tutorial ★

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this post is going to be a little walkthrough of my general coloring process.  i use a cintiq 13HD tablet and manga studio 5 EX.

1. lines.  pretty self-explanitory.  i use the textured pen set to brush size 8 (this is a default brush).

2. flats.  i try to think of a color theme before i begin.  i find that too many colors makes the picture muddled and things don’t come together.  i also try to keep all the colors either warm or cool.  i’m lazy and i like to use the magic wand to select areas to fill in.  i always expand the selection by 1-2 pixels to make sure the color fully reached the lines (sometimes the anti-aliasing leaves white space).  i keep every element on a separate layer.

3. coloring step 1. i start with the skin and add gradients using the running edge watercolor brush set to a large size (another default brush).  i use the blur tool to soften the edges.  this is the stage that i plan lighting.  for this piece i wanted the light concentrated on her face and for her hair and lower half to be darker.  to bring the colors together i used a light teal as the highlights on her face.  i put the lips and eye colors on a separate layer.

4-5. coloring step 2. i applied to above to the rest of the image.  i thought her hair looked a bit washed out when i was done so i put an overlay layer over it to bring some redness back.  i also adjusted the hue and saturation of some of the greens and the hair ribbon, and finished the eyes and lips.

6-7. coloring step 3. i made a multiply and screen layer on top of all the color layers.  on the multiply layer i chose a light reddish color and put shadows over the entire piece.  i feel that this a) is easy (lol), and b) helps bring cohesion to the piece, since all the shading will be the same hue and saturation.  the screen layer i used for highlighting, and i chose a light teal.

8. details.  lastly i finish off the piece with the details.  this is done on separate layers set to normal mode.  i’m terrible with hair highlighting, so i’m trying to work on improving that aspect of my coloring.  the very last thing i do is to color in the line art.

9-10. 100% closeups of the finished piece, which can be seen here.  i’ll be posting my brushes in a separate post, which can be found here.

omg thank you! I usually just make them work off of each other idk hahahah :’D

A quick tutorial/cheat sheet on how I draw kisses!! I’m going to assume you already know how to draw a head and how to angle it, because that’s an entire procedure in itself. I’m going to focus on mainly the lips and also try and tackle some common mistakes when you’re first starting out. 

Pursing the lips

So this is boring but crucial. If you don’t purse, their is no real kiss (take notes) bc placing your lips on top of someone else’s is not how you kiss… The most important part are the corners of the mouth, especially from the side view, because that’s what changes the most. 

The actual kissing yeee

Let’s start do a basic side view kiss on the lips. And believe it or not, I think this one is the hardest!  

Think about which parts of the face are going to be in front of the other! This can take some time to get the hang of, but once you get that down it’s easy. Also, focus on getting the heads at the right distance and angle. A common mistake is drawing them too close. 

The Lightning Shape: 

Still keeping in mind which part of the line is “Red’s” upper lip and which part is “Blue’s” lower lip, play around with the shape of the lightning. Very subtle changes can have a very strong impact! I usually go by feel, so take your time, but here are some things to look out for: 

Details squishing etc.

So yeah once the lightning shape looks good, I usually add details and squish parts of the face that will touch. Which usually includes the noses, but from this angle they won’t squish unless you intend on making nice big noses <3. By now it should look something like this: 

You don’t have to add the corners of the mouth! I usually do when I want to show that the character is smiling. 

One technique used a lot in anime/manga + other cartoony art styles, is fading lines where two soft-ish objects press hard against each other. The picture above explains it. 

Common mistakes

Getting down the crucial kissing part of fanart is hard and you will mess upp SO MANY TIIIIIIMES, but you learn from your mistakes, so don’t be discouraged. There are some things though that I frequently see when people draw kisses that makes it look awkward and stale, many of which I used to do myself. Here are some examples:

Try your best to avoid these. Most of the mistakes have little to do with the lips and more to do with the angle of the head. So getting that down before you move on to the lips is important. 

¾ view Kissing

There are not a lot of angles where you actually see the lips meet (or at least not that I can draw…). Depending on how the heads are placed in relation to each other, you may or may not see the lips in a ¾ view. The way I have demonstrated is done in a way that the nose will bump into the other’s upper cheek. 

Aaand that’s about it! These things will make more and more sense the more you draw them. At first it can seem very hard with so many things to keep track of, and it is, but practice makes perfect! 

Rule of thumb: does the angle and position of the heads make sense? How are the lips going to align? What parts of the face are going to be in front of the other? How much will the lips purse? And finally, what is going to squish? 

Thank you for reading! 😘