Birdnest

The Ekenäs castle of magical research

Process:

Instead of roasting your pumpkin (or butternut squash as some comments have said) in the skin, peel it and cube it before roasting. It's more work, but you will get more flavor development as I will describe in a moment. Also roughly chop your carrot and onion. Toss them and the garlic all with oil and salt, then roast on a metal baking sheet.

Don't crowd them, or they will steam instead of browning. You're looking for some deep brown color. You will find that things stick to the pan, this is okay. The browning is a combination of Maillard reaction and caramelization, two distinct but delicious processes.

After everything is nicely browned and softened, transfer it all to a bowl and put your baking sheet on the stove. I want to double check here, I specified a METAL making sheet. You do this part with a glass baking dish and it will explode. There should be a ton of roasty toasty brown stuff left on the sheet. Turn on a burner under it and pour in the sherry. You can also use white wine here. As the sherry comes to a simmer, use a sharp spatula to scrape the brown bits up in it. The liquid will start to dissolve the residue and extract the flavor. Move the sheet around with a hot pad so the hot spot and liquid move where you need them to get all of it. This stuff is FLAVOR GOLD. What you're doing is called deglazing the pan, a simple cooking technique that cranks flavor up to 11.

I did almost roast the onions, garlic, and other veggies with the pumpkin, but chose not to so I wouldn’t be standing around for 30-40 minutes and so I could keep prepping as I waited for the pumpkin to soften.

Hi Anon!

You're in luck! I'm currently wrapping up a book which is shaded digitally, so I've been thinking a lot about this recently.

How I do this is by no means the only way, so take from these tips as much or little as you want! When I add grays and shadows to a line art drawing, I try to think about these things:

Preparing the image

I like to work with a file that has a white background and a layer with only line art on top of it. Between these two layers I add new layers where I use the pen tool and bucket to fill areas with black, then I lower the opacity for that layer to get a value that I want.

This method works well for me, and for simpler pieces I don't need more than 3 layers with different values - light, medium and dark grays.

I work in Clip Studio. Here's a picture of the layers of a recent drawing. Each layer is actually completely black but you can see the opacity percentages by each layer. Lower percentage -> brighter value. This makes it super duper easy to change the value of a layer, no need to repaint it, just change the opacity!

Value composition

For the best result, do a couple of value sketches with a limited set of values and find something that works well for the image. Getting the values right is what will improve the image the most! Here's a quick tutorial on muddycolors. Muddy Colors is a very nice art blog to check out. Looking at grayscale storyboard drawings or value sketches are great ways to pick up on this too.

I try to group values when working with grays. Take this image for example:

The character in the foreground has mainly dark grays, which separates her from the background, which has mostly light grays. Then the windows are white and the roof black.

Value composition is a huge and complex area and I recommend anyone wanting to learn to be more conscious about their values and to do value sketches. Analysing art you think has good values is great too.

Shadows

Not every piece needs shadows, but they can add a lot to an image! I use three kinds of shadows when I work in grayscale.

Inked shadows - these shadows are added during the inking stage and usually show areas where light would have almost no way of getting there, such as under this tent.

Gradient shadows - these shadows usually represent something getting further and further away from a light source or an area that would bounce light. This tree receives a tiny bit of light from a campfire on the ground and moonlight that bounces on the ground and up, fading as we get higher up in the tree. But mainly I add these gradients in ways that look cool and will help the overall composition.

Hard shadows - these shadows appear when a strong light casts shadows and can be used on a shape or to cover something. Here's a werewolf with shadows on its back, which gives it a better sense of mass and is interesting visually!

You can also cover an area in shadow like this, where the tree casts a shadow down on the archer and the cliff.

Texture

I like to add a layer of noise as a finishing touch. In Clip Studio you can create a noise layer with Filter->Render->Perlin noise... Find a balance of scale and amplitude that works for the image, then change the layer mode to "Vivid Light" and lower the opacity of the layer to around 30%. I like how this looks, it's not super visible usually but helps make the drawing feel less artificial and digital.

I hope that helps! Here are some nice links too:

Muddy Colors

Android Arts

Gurney Journey - Read his books!