Hey! I love your blog! How do you do shading so well on your characters? I've been struggling with it for a while
((MOD POST, just because of this ask.
So Shading? Well I kinda just figured this out rather recently but I’ll share it with you, and my general drawing process.
Then we get to flat colours
Then I’m able to get to shading. First I take into consideration where my light source is. I don’t usually draw it out, only if it’s really looking odd, or here for reference.
Then above the layer I’m wanting to shade I create a clipping group. This will prevent my brush (In this case a completely 100% solid brush regardless of pressure of # of times I go over it with) from colouring outside the area I want to shade. This makes shading a LOT easier.
Ok, then I set that clipped layer to mode Multiply, and make sure I’m using the same colour as the base area I’m shading. This will allow for more realistic blending.
So I’ll start out with a flat shade. I’ve shaded a few areas with this general shading idea.
Next I create another clipping layer above that one, and shade areas that are supposed to be darker.
I’ll then blend them in a bit, still using the same colouring. Here’s the brush settings I use for this.
Aaaand, it should look something like this
See how much smoother that looks? Now just repeat those steps. You don’t have to use the same time of brush for laying down the bases before blending. You could use a brush with a lighter base, or a lighter base colour, or one of the ones I tend to use a lot a marker setting that I can then create gradients rather easily with. Also if you want highlights do everything the same, but set it to Screen instead of Multiply.
Here is the finished product:
I hope this helped, and you like my horrible light-bending disembodied Luna Head! Experiment a bit with different things. And though I’m using SAI, a lot of this can be translated over to other drawing programs. I know it can be translated to Photoshop, but I think their Screen/Multiply works slightly different. I don’t use Photoshop that much so you’d have to look elsewhere for those kinds of things. And of course practice. Practice practice practice. Take a look at how shadows effect things in real life, and good luck and keep drawing dungeonmasterbonbon
((PS: If you want to ask me further questions on how I draw and everything, or just want to see insane stuff I do on Tumblr when not updating Nexie go to my Mod Blog. You'll find all sorts of neato stuff there.))
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