Theneighborcatarts

so first of course I plan out my figures and fill them with base colors. Very very important for the final pop of color ( ignore the bad quality picture, this was from Timelapse.) Usopp is Yellow, Luffy is red.

I then make a new layer, clip it to the colors, and fill in a dark grey color for the hair using the brush “De Anza” on procreate (you can search it up), or you can use any grainy brush you think will work. Make sure to not fill it in fully, make it look grainy so that the base colors will shine through and make the color vibrant. - example of brush

Make another layer of your lighting. This one, just mess around with it.

for the final, important-ish part of rendering, make a layer (or layers, your choice) above the lighting and base colors. Use this layer to touch up on the hair using a clean part, but make sure not to fully cover up the grainy part. (For this one I used the free outline hair brush for the automatic black outline strands you see on Usopp’s hair. I also used a different one for touch-ups, but I don’t remember it)

For example, with the clean brush, i added strands that curl on usopp’s hair, but made sure to only render the shadows, so that the light part can have some texture. For luffy, i did the opposite, render the light with a clean brush but leave the shadow of his hair so you can see the grain texture.