Pearlescent

Hey friends!

“Hey man that’s not bad!”

“It’s not that great!”

“No it’s good man!”

“Maybe though, add some shading around where the head shadows the neck.”

“Make sure you it’s obvious where the light source is coming from.”

“It will help give the drawing more volume and depth.”

Good morning, Anon!  That’s a tricky question. Metal and metallics are definitely one of the more complex textures to paint. It’s high contrast, high reflection, picks up the main light source, reflected light source and any colors around it unless it’s a very matte metal. I’m in no way an expert but I’ll try to explain as best as I can.

Vaard’s filigree is a good example as smaller metal details are a lot easier to paint than large pieces of armor (as that would take me hours to paint a step by step example of), but the concept is generally the same for both. 

I’ll do an ultra polished metal to kind of show the basic effect that can be buffed up or dulled down depending on the metal. Plus cylindrical metal is the easiest to demonstrate.

Once you have your base tones, decide where your light is coming from and stick to it. I did my light coming from the top right and highlighted where it’s going to be hitting the metal the most. 

1. Along those lines, you can literally draw a line of your highlight color all the way down. I did the far right where the light is hitting the most and the far left where the cylinder would be picking up the reflected light from underneath.

I also brushed a little white airbrushing closest to the light source as my original base was a little dark.

2. Next do a line of your shadow on whichever side your light is hitting the least. Note that with a reflective metal, especially silver or pale tones, is going to pick up a shadow color closest to the most prominent color around it. In this case, a bluish shadow as the cloak is the most prominent color close to it.

Environment will also affect this and make it look more like it belongs in the picture if you use the colors around it. 

If you’re doing a more matte metal, you would do much wider, softer shade swaths with little reflective light from the underside.

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3. Now where your light is hitting with the most intensity, shade on the opposite side of your light along the edges with your shadow color as polished metals pick up very intense shadows and it helps the metallic effect along.

Now that you have your base, scuff and weather it up a bit with some light scratches (Just a thin white and black brush that I did some mild hatching around the shaded areas) and you have some basic metal!

This general alternating light and dark works for most curved surfaces. The higher points of your metal is always going to be the brightest with the most light followed by some darker shadows.

I hope this helps and isn’t too confusing. I tried my best.  Best of luck to you and your metal painting, Anon!

Ok this is a real quick one but let me show you how to get more-or-less accurate sizes for child characters. Kids are tricky to draw, they are - from toddler up to about teens people change radically almost every year so pinpointing character’s size during those years is pure hell.

What you need to do to make everything super easy for yourself is to check their Head Proportion. What makes kids look like - well, kids, is that their heads are proportionally large in comparison to their body.

Average adult is about 7,5 heads tall in comparison to their own body, however with children under 10 that number is just under 6 heads with about 1 head shorter the younger you go down to 3 heads as an infant.

Easiest way to figure the so-so head-height of a certain age is to find images of said age group and do a quick count on them

at which after you can replicate it in your own works - don’t mind if it’s not 1:1 with reference, finding images that are actually of the age you need is tricky and kids in general vary a lot so someone might be a lot taller than others. You have a bout  0,5 -1 heads of wiggle room before it starts to look way older.

A couple days ago a friend asked me how to color a character in an environment so I decided to throw together this quick tutorial!

Good, I’ve got your attention. I’ve heard about this net neutrality bullshit returning. I fought it when it started popping up a few years ago, and I’m going to fight it again. Guys, it’s BACK AGAIN and even worse theres a big chance it will END UP PASSING!

https://www.battleforthenet.com/#bftn-action-form

This could literally mean a shit ton of you wont be able to see me anymore if your provider decides that they want to regulate/censor, sayyy overly sexual content. You’ll also have to pay extra money to even use Tumblr!

https://www.battleforthenet.com/#bftn-action-form

Please guys, we defeated this shit once, we can do it again. They’re trying to do it now while people are distracted by the holidays and fucking Justice League. As of today, it seems as though there have only been 266,810 calls made to Congress. This is NOT good enough!! MILLIONS of people use the net, and if each one of them took 60 seconds to call and protect it, holy balls do you KNOW how much of a difference that would make??? But noooo, you’re busy streaming an ecchi anime that wont be available to you soon!!!!!

Heres a direct link to make a difference (theres also links to other sites of the same nature on here), and yes, YOU can make a fucking difference because this is YOUR internet at stake here. If you’re not going to make the call, share this and maybe SOMEONE fucking will!! This is important as shit and we cant afford to lose. Dec 14th is the deadline.

The reason they started this again is because… the timing.

Coincidence? I think NOT.