1.       Flat Colours If the character you want to colour has bright hair, isn’t black etc, then put the Flat Colours on a Layer that is under the Manga Cap. ( e.g. Nami, Sanji, Doflamingo etc ) But if the characters has dark/black hair, then draw the Flat Colours on a Layer that is over the Manga Cap. ( e.g. Luffy, Robin, Boa Hancock etc ) For dark haired characters I also draw some extra lines over the Layer. It’s good to use Clipping Masks here, so you don’t draw over parts where the lines shouldn’t be. I also make myself a colour pallet, for fast and easy access to used colours.  

  2.       The Strands

Now the fun part begins! I don’t do all the hair at once, I do different parts one after another. For this Tutorial I’m only going to colour Robin’s fringe. I’m making three new Clipping Masks, each for a darker colour.

With 1 being the lightest, and 3 being the darkest of the darker colours.

Now I just draw hair strands with a hard round brush, 100% opacity, 2 px.

  3.       Erasing

Now I make the Clipping Masks 2 & 3 invisible. Then I’m slightly erasing the middle of the strands. For this I’m using an eraser with 20 – 25 % opacity.

I repeat this for Clipping Mask 2 & 3! But I keep the finished layers visible.

It looks like this now.

4.       Highlights

Now I take the lightest colour of my pallet and draw strands again! Hard Round Brush, 100% Opacity, 2 px.

After that, I slightly erase the outer parts of it. Eraser has an opacity of 20 – 25 % again.

  5.       Shading

Now to the shading! I create two new Clipping Masks, over the Layers 3 and 4.

For Layer “3 Shadow” I use the same colour as on “3” and draw hard shadows.

Then smooth them out with the eraser again, 20 - 25 % opacity.

Repeat that for “4 Shadow” with the colour used on “4”. 

6.       The Finish

To finish it, I’m using the lightest colour of my pallet again, and draw some hard lines.

First I duplicate the Layer with the manga cap.

Then I set the opacity of the original cap on 0%.

Now I erase all the black parts that are blood.

After that I redraw the shadows on a new layer, OR I copy some parts of the cap and paste it over the cap (Doesn’t work all the time, for this I redrew the parts)

To see where the blood originally was, I set the opacity of the original cap to 10-30%.

So it’s a little bit visible again.

Then I redraw the wound/cut.

I use a dark red for that.

In the speech bubble is an example of how I redraw them. For cuts it’s just a line.

Then I take a brighter red and draw the blood on a new layer (over the wound layer).

Since faces etc. aren’t flat I try to keep the structure in mind and try to imagine where and how the blood would flow down the face.

At first I often looked up pictures on Google Pictures or Tutorials, but after a while I got a feel of how to draw it. Or well, how I think it looks good haha.

Now I make a new Layer under the wound layer and make the skin a bit reddish.

For that I use a normal brush with a very low opacity, mostly 05%.

If it’s too strong then I erase some parts.

For the shading a make a clipping mask for each new darker colour.

I draw it with a hard brush, and the smooth it out with the eraser.

(Right side’s already smoothed out)

Same goes for lighter parts.

Now I make a new layer for the highlights (it doesn’t has to be a clipping mask, it only has to be over the blood layers)

For the highlights I set the brush to 1px and 100% opacity and make a few white strokes here and there.

Here I just try out where it looks best.

Those are all the layers for the blood:

And well, that’s it!