Hi Ticcy! I know you have a ton of asks, so I'm so sorry to bother you, but I've been an admirer of your art for a long time, and I've learned a lot by studying your drawings! However, I have a hard time coloring. My colors always look so stale, but your coloring is so warm. What's your coloring process like? Any tips you can give me? Thank you so much! You're amazing!<3
Hello! Thank you!! I’m glad you like my works! /)///(\About the coloring, I use a lot of levels to give it the right atmosphere…Let’s use John for this, who is very happy to give his face for this explanation
Once flats are done, my first step is put a level in Multiply with a pale yellow color, to give it enough basic warmth
The change is vert subtle, it doesn’t have to be SUPER warmth, just a little bit to give some life to the colors.Then I start to work on the shadows, and I hide the flat colors, to see better the volumes. I use different colors for those, usually they are violet/warmer where the light hits, and blue/colder om the opposite side. (mode: Multiply)
I often add a blue level (mode: Normal) with a very low opacity to not make it too saturated, since with multiply it’s super easy to make the color super darker where there isn’t need to.
Then I work with Overlay levels to add some light on the character. Again, less is the opacity, better it is.(of course it depends on the scene… for these basic pinup I prefer to not exaggerated with shadows and lights)
One problem with the overlay light is that often kills the skin color, so I add some pinkish brushes on the face and hands (mode: Multiply) to make some natural “blush”.After this I pass it on Photoshop, and I play with saturation, colors, hue and other stuff to make the general work looking like I want :)
Hope it helped!! :D
