#art guide

(my script is in the alt text if ever the font is hard to read)

I’ve been getting a lot of asks wondering how I go about picking my colors for character designs, pages, backgrounds, etc, pretty much anything about color in general, and I figured in some attempt to try to answer them all at once, here’s my attempt at a color-centric art tutorial! I’m far from an expert on the subject, and I haven’t received any formal training on the matter, so this is entirely constructed of ideas I’ve gleaned from a bunch of snippets of different people’s advice over the years, studying other people’s art, and experimenting on my own to create something that works for me. Nonetheless, I feel passionate about the subject, and I hope this is able to help make color “click!” like a key in a hole for anyone who reads it. I had to discover my key-click moment on my own through trial and error, but i don’t believe in gatekeeping advice, so hopefully I can help you skip the trouble I went through lmfao.

None of this is meant to be like… a shaming or judgmental authoritative truth of “this is how it must always be done! anything outside of my vision is wrong and morally bad! Harrumph!!!” Especially since this is random shit I’ve figured out on my own with no formal training. It’s more just “if you are looking for something to ease your strain, perhaps this might help you give you what you need to have an easier time!” But most of the time I don’t even color my illustrations the way I do in this tutorial. Usually I try to balance & combine these principles with the “standard colors” that a scene is “supposed to be,” like if the ground is a concrete gray and the trees are green, I’ll keep them looking gray and green (depending on the lighting), but with the knowledge of “I want this to be a sad scene, so I’ll make the grays and greens lean heavily closer to blue, so the audience knows that it’s time to be sad.” Stuff like that. They’re cheat codes for strategic intent, not strict rules.

Now hopefully when it comes to covering more specific things, like how I design my characters, you guys now know the baseline foundation I’m running off of so I don’t have to explain all of this first before I get into the nitty-gritty hairs of “why I made this character purple and green vs why this character is blue and yellow” lmao.

Color is a hard subject to explain! Most of the color theory explanations I’ve heard primarily cover stuff like the science of reflecting light, then name drops all the famous kinds of color palettes, tells me what a cool vs warm color is, explains nothing else, and dips. Which, personally, has literally never been helpful for me when it comes to understanding why the fuck my painting should include the color blue in the shadows. Heaven forbid applying any of that shit to character design. Ough. No I had to figure that out on my own lmfao. So therefore this tutorial is more skewed towards that kind of perspective, someone who doesn’t really benefit (at least at this skill level) from the scientific cerebral shit. I want to know the why behind your creative choices!!! Tell me why the curtains must be blue!! That’s what’s important to me on a practical level. Dont get me wrong, I’m sure one day I’ll learn the purpose behind the scientific stuff, I’m sure there’s a reason behind it, but you’ve gotta figure out how to take the first steps at all to begin with before I can get to the master level stuff of like………scientifically understanding how bounce light works. And if we don’t understand why the curtains are blue, I don’t think we’re gonna get why the bounce light should be blue, too. So I wanted to explain it!!! I wanted to cover it!! Because I’ve never seen it explained before!!! And it’s important to know the why!!!

a female-centric tutorial for legs <3

we start with bones.

as you can see, the femur juts out, and there's a gap between it and the iliac crest-- this forms what ppl know as "hip dips". some women don't have them.

here's some legs with different fat and muscle contents for comparison

but why are they *shaped* like that? (I hear u ask). well, muscles. muscles can Bulge or Wrap. Think of it as a garter on a thigh-- the thigh bulges, the garter wraps. the thigh then bulges gloriously around it.

here are some simplified representations of the important muscle groups in the leg.

the gracilis/abductor magnus is the "inner thigh". it bulges.

the rectus femoris is a part of the massive bulges we see on muscular legs. it's the middle one

the vastus medialis and vastus lateralis are muscles on the lower inside and outside of your thigh, and are the other bulges you see on muscular legs

the sartorius originates at the hip and wraps around the rectus femoris to terminate at the medial femur (inner knee-ish). it's the garter in this example-- it causes those bulging muscles to squish in the inner thigh.

the anterior tibialis and some other muscles wrap around the shin area.

the gastrocnemius is what we know as the calf. it's the meat of your lower leg, the bulging muscle we all think of when we think "calf"

a little while ago someone asked me how i do my fur, so i made a guide!

the following tutorial was originally written for chickensmoothie's oekaki (chickenpaint v2). ymmv using this guide for other programs, though i have done my best to make this guide general!

1. choose colors, lay down your base

if you want your base to have an established pattern (like stripes, spots) do so now while coloring your base!

personally i have only tried this technique with a limited amount of colors (3-4), but it should be possible to use whatever colors and as many colors as you like!

if you have a hard time choosing colors, you can stick to black and white and instead practice only using values (dark and light). later on, you can use a color mode (like "overlay") to colorize your artwork in cs, or drag your artwork to another program where you can color it instead!

be aware that the next step is blending (during which new colors are created and some colors might not "blend well"!)

2. blend

i blended here using the default watercolor brush on cs!

if you have difficulty using the watercolor brush (or do not have access to it), you can alternatively try a low opacity pencil/pen, the air brush, or a soft edge eraser.

i blended on the base layer, but we'll be doing the "fur strokes" on a new layer above (taking advantage of "clipping" layers, to keep our brush strokes within our base!)

i like to leave some "brush strokes" of my blending tool visible to make the base more visually interesting! but you can try for a more smooth gradient if you prefer the look of that

creating a nice base is a super essential step!

for more realistic animal coats, you should follow the anatomy of your subject. for example, coloring the "upper coat" darker and the "undercoat" lighter

be sure to account for the patterns of your subject too, don't blend them out too much or they might lose their shape!

3. following the fur direction, start adding brush strokes

make a new layer above your base, this is where you'll add your individual fur strokes!

using a small brush with size sensitivity and opacity sensitivity, go between each section of color, using the base colors already set down

using varying size and opacity, continue to add small lines of color to resemble fur strokes. for longer fur, draw longer strokes. for shorter fur, draw shorter strokes

eventually, i will use the color picker between strokes to add more variation in color

the goal is to use the blended colors we created during step 2 to "blend" out sections, making a gradient with individual fur strokes

you don't need to color pick often if you remain in areas of "similar" color!

i also like to use the soft edge eraser to lower the opacity of some strokes, and to soften the tips of some strokes to make them blend better into the base

if you do not have a tablet or pressure sensitivity, you can manually adjust your brush and eraser to change the size and opacity. i also recommend using the soft edge eraser often to create more "variation" of opacity with less effort!

4. keep going, keep adding fur

be patient here, this is a time consuming step, but well worth the wait!

basically, keep going with step 3 until you've filled out your whole base (or are otherwise satisfied with it!)

5. duplicate your strokes layer and box blur it

here i just duplicated my strokes layer (i used 1 layer for all my brush strokes), then i used the default box blur on cs (find box bur underneath the "effects" menu at the top)

skip this step if you prefer the plain look and rather not blur it!

for those not using oekaki, this is basically a low amount of gaussian blur over the entire layer of fur strokes!

6. lower opacity of box blur

here, i set the opacity of the blurred strokes layer to about 50%, but you should experiment and see what opacity you like best!

of course, if you prefer not to lower the opacity of ur blur, u can do that as well!

7. add brush strokes outside the lines

optionally, for more realism and to make your subject look fluffy,

you can add a layer atop your lines and color pick from your fur to add a few brush strokes outside the lines!

and that's it! now you've got some realistic looking fur!

below is an example cat i've colored using this technique:

background: qwertyo on cs (Solminol on th!) lines: adamanted on cs and th! edits and coloring: castiiian (hey that's me!!) character owned by Lokisaurus on cs!

a short and sweet guide on disability aids in character creation . inspired by @saszor 's wonderful series going into specific disabilities in art and character creation. this is a very broad guide on purpose to help artists who are newer to including disability in their work

@stabbypyrobean , teeth guide-thingy, as requested 🫡 !! I HOPE THIS HELPS I do not know what I’m doing half the time, but I have faith and a bag of gummy sharks im #lockedin.

Disclaimer: I do not actually know how they paint the eyes,this is just me guessing their process purely from observations

Transcript: