ah yes welcome to my artiste blog B)

Acts like he’s so confident but it’s just make-believe

Wanting to be myself but it just ain’t easy for me

(You mean your friend?)

Right, he wants to feel less like he’s some kind of freak 🎶

Ack I always get nervous answering these kinds of questions cuz I don’t really know what kind of tips you want. Since lighting and coloring go hand in hand and that’s my specialty, I’ll just give you the basics of what I know >_<

Start with your local colors (the colors of the object/character without any lighting on them) and build up from there with different layer types.

Use multiply layers for shadows, overlay layers for glows/ambient light, and add/linear dodge layers for bright/direct light (if the light source is bright enough or it looks better with your style, just use normal color blocks in white or a bright color for rim lights and such). Sometimes I’ll add a pin light layer overtop of my pieces to brighten or saturate it, but that’s just a stylistic thing.

Never make shadows black or gray—even if they’re desaturated, always make sure there’s some color in your shadows. Traditionally, cooler tones like blue or purple work well for this, as they simulate the outdoors with the reflection of the sky. If a character is in warm lighting, go for a more desaturated purple or red.

Another way of shading is also using the color wheel. Use a color adjacent to another as it’s shadow. For red, purple. For green, blue. For yellow, orange. This is a very oversimplified method, but sometimes it can be helpful if you really need a color to pop more.

Some really great concepts to know to get better at coloring and lighting are chiaroscuro, reflected/bounced light, ambient shadows, color relativity, and obviously, color theory. Also, the obvious, study from life and use reference! Those are the best ways to learn and get better