mostly wizards

Seriously, where did Steve find that armor? I hope he didn’t steal it from an aggressive warrior or something…I don’t want him to get in trouble, ya know? It’s been a year since this tutorial is on Patreon, so I’ll post it for everyone now! (I have to work on a reptile scales or transparent materials tutorial one day tho)

Underwater tutorial: https://darhak.tumblr.com/post/642964456883765248/steve-why-is-he-always-like-this-metal-tutorial

I don’t know how to deal with Steve honestly. Things are getting out of control at every tutorial… It’s been almost a year this tutorial is on Patreon and I don’t have a lot of new things to post, so enjoy!

You may ask yourself why don’t I post often… Well! I got a job in a 2D animation studio (Loomi animation) as a background artist! The team is awesome and I love the projects. I basically draw all day, so I draw less as a hobby but still. (I might post some 3D animation too in the next months, we’ll see). Anyway prepare yourself because I feel like my artskills are improving a lot since I started at the studio ahah!

Metal tutorial

Fire tutorial

[ID: colored digital sketch of Essek Thelyss from Critical Role on a background of dot paper. He’s on his hands and knees in about a three quarters view, looking down at some papers. He is dressed casually in a loose black robe and black pants with gold trim, as well as gold disc earrings with another silver disk eclipsing them. ]

i wish i could say this was a doodle but i spent way too long on this pose because i wanted to draw Essek having some floor time

[ID: colored digital sketch of Essek Thelyss from Critical Role on a background of dot paper. He’s laying belly-down on the floor, head tilted towards the viewer and pillowed on one elbow, and he’s wearing a shirt with puffy white sleeves and a black cloak with gold patterning at the edges and a medallion dangling from the corner. His eyes are half open and there’s a little black scribble above his head.]

[ID: a messily colored digital sketch of Essek and Caleb from Critical Role. Both men are pictured in profile from the bust up. Essek is wearing a mantle with a fur collar and gold chains across his chest and dangling from a moon-shaped earring, and Caleb is wearing a striped scarf with his hair braided along the side of his head. Essek’s eyes are closed and he’s kissing Caleb on the forehead, one gloved hand cupped against the side of his head. Caleb’s eyes are also closed and he is smiling. The entire sketch is colored with a purple-to-blue gradient. ]

manifesting that head-holding energy for some more forehead kisses

Quick little video tutorial! This is a method I use to block in shapes when I’m fighting the urge to polish my lineart at an early stage, especially in rough concept art that doesn’t actually need polished lineart.

I group two layers in photoshop—a rough sketch, and a flat color—and then carve out the negative space by painting into a mask on the group, instead of filling in the positive shapes. From there I can start painting and adding shading into that group, knowing that I’ve already locked down a good initial silhouette for the object/character:

It feels like oil painting, and I end up finding silhouettes/shapes in a way I wouldn’t if I was obsessively cleaning up the linework first. Digital art has a tendency to veer towards cleanliness/polish, so I love finding little opportunities for happy accidents and a bit of mess!

I used it on my unicorn piece last month, for instance, which I think would have lost a lot of its dynamism and charm if I had worried too much about doing a full ink pass:

Hi thank you!! Sorry this took so long to answer, I kind of realized I had to relearn how to paint because I don't full on do it a lot ajsbfndncn here are some general points that feed into my thought process when I'm picking colors!

This was a bit of a learning process, especially when it came to breaking down exactly why a color is the way it is, so in addition here's some videos I found helpful.

Painting skin tones by Marco Bucci, who has a ton of really easy to understand videos on his channel about understanding light and color

This Dave Greco video, which I think is worth putting on in the background as he explains his process while actually painting.

Note: digital art tutorials tend to be pretty white in terms of examples, and while the majority of color and light principles can be applied the same to any skin tone, there are still nuances to it that are covered less often/in depth. Here are some videos by Christa Forrest and Sinix relevant to painting black skin tones specifically.