Gifts from the Universe

hate exercising and realizing i've let go of a lot of anxiety and anger because i've overturned my fight-or-flight response.

hate eating right and eating enough and eating 3 times a day and realizing i'm less anxious and i have more energy

hate journaling in my stupid notebook with my stupid bic ballpoint and realizing that i've actually started healing about something once i'm able to externalize it

hate forgiving myself hate complimenting myself more often hate treating myself with kindness hate taking a gratitude inventory hate having patience hate talking to myself gently

hate turning my little face up to the sun and taking deep breaths and looking at nature and grounding myself and realizing that i feel less burdened and more hopeful, more actually-here, that i am able to see the good sides of myself more clearly, that i am able to see not only how far i have to grow - but also how much growth i have already done & how much of my life i truly fill with light and laughter and love

Oh a good question!! I don’t really think about itmuch actually…  but I can try to show my steps in more detail…!Maybe you can try it out for yourself! I only use Paint Tool SAI2 while doing so. (But it is almost like Photoshop, just more simple)Maybe my english and knowledge is not very good for explaining so I am sorry inadvance… (つ▽⊂|| ) and many typos…

First I draw a simple sketch… I use the resolutionof 2432 x 1367 pixels

then I do outlines, maybe you like to see the brushsettings for this:

background lineart on a separate  layer

Since my pencil makes fuzzy outlines, I have to outlineit on a separate layer again, but I use a fancy, gaudy color for thatso I don’t miss!

I use clipping group on top of that layer to cover itwith the actual colors later.

for the sense of the right hue, you may look for thecolors of the old animations, mostly, the darkest color (left) willhave a very dark gray warm color and the brightest color (right) willhave a very bright gray cold color, such colors are still to see indigital colored anime intentionally. Just try to keep the colors verygrayish mostly!

For the shading I like to use blue/green and graycolors… but it is very intuitive and I often just experiment.

( I don’t go too much on detail how to color thebackground since it is basically the same, like with the moving object infront, only difference is, that you don’t do a hard shading, you cansmooth it out with blending and paint it, there is a little bit morespace for artistic freedom in general. Also if you have a darker theme it is good to use the darkest color possible for black shadinglike here)  

blur is very important and I think it’s what itmakes looking old school, since back in the 80s and 90s they oftenused transparentsheet in the cel animation technique (characters are drawn on cel andlaid over a static background drawing *wiki*),that would cast such shadows and make the colors a little blurry onthe film a little. 

So the figure in front would have to gain suchan effect. I copy the layer for color and blur it and give it themode for color too!Also very bright colors would strongly blur soI make another copy of the color layer and just blur it highly and change the mode to screen tofade the contrast against its strong dark background.

At the end, I would just adjust the outlinecolors a little bit to be less apparent if the contrast is too strongon bright spaces (using a clipping group on the outline layer andmake the hue mid-red-grayish)On a final note a slight blur to everything!