rendering tutorial with Doodles! We're gonna be drawing Donnie today
first, get your subject and background, and locate a lightsource. This is gonna be dark/dramatic light, so i'm keeping a dark background for contrast and our light source will be this purple orb
Step1: multiply layer over the drawing in a desaturated purple/pink. then, you errase away the parts that are hit by the light. For this you do need to have some control of volumes. This layers purpose is to block main areas of light and shadow
as a bonus, i like to add a rim of a lighter and more saturated pink around the edges of the shadows. This works best when youre working with skin, due to its slight translucency, but i think it adds a good and nice glow
Step 2: with a clipping mask, add a second layer of shadow in multiply. Better to choose a color that matches the background; that way you can better unify the pallette. First step works with soft shades, but this second layer needs to be cell shading. Bright/intense lights create bright and intense shadows
Step 3: At this point, we already have a good foundation, but we can push it further. With another clipping mask and another multiply, same color as the last, add soft shadows in the areas furthest from the light. It'll help with the glow and distancing
Step 4: we arent quite done darkening this up. With a last layer of multiply, you can set the mood by choosing a color to tint over the piece. This depends on the mood youre going for
its subtle, but it adds to the way the piece will be read. I'm going for a purply tone, its warmer and gives the feeling Donnie's slightly enamoured by this orb of light. Here you have the oportunity do some slight errasing of light too but it has to be very subtle, for the faintest glow and highlighting of specific areas
Step 5: we begin with overlay! Usually i use yellows for this, as my light sources tend to be yellow, but because our light source is purple I'm using a light, saturated purple tone in overlay, then lowering the opacity. We want to build light slowly; these first layers are for creating the glow. I did two; one for more general glow in faint purple and another for more specific areas in a yellow (cuz i couldnt help myself to add yellow
Step 6: Hard lights. Still in overlay, i color picked the color of the orb and painted some hard lights on the afected areas. Then i softened some and lowered the opacity; we dont wanna rush this, we needa slowly build things up
Step 7: highlights. In the edges of surfaces I like adding that lil extra bit of light to push it all further a lil more. This is done with same color as before, but 50% opacity
Step 8: if you wanna get funky with it, add an extra overlay in a different color to add a ring behind the character for a secondary lightsource and some extra pizzaz
Step 9: eye reflections! I dont like using pure white, but rather a color close to white. this is an advice for everything in general: avoid pure white. You can lighten a color thats not white, but you cant lighten true white. Its then a pain for when you wanna lighten things up, trust me. If you wanna get fancy, you can also add a soft rim around the actual glow of the eye to push the colors an extra step forward. Because of the colors i been chosing, i went for purple and blue
And thats it!! After that you can add a few extra touches but thats pretty much it
The entire thesis of the technique is to slowly build up drama layer by layer; they all have a purpose. Usually I only do two multiply (general shadows and darker shadows) and three overlay (general light, hair highlight and detail highlight) but for more dramatic pieces i work more slowly and build with more layers to achieve more drama. In the end, this still look around 16 layers (counting the actual drawing, background and color reference) and it really is a very quick process. All of these steps may seem like a chore, but its much faster than having to pick colors individually for each part. It also allows you to be slightly more messy when rendering and it unifies the color palette as theyre all shaded with the same colors. Also good thing is that its extremely flexible and can be used for any type of light direction/lightsource and any color
Here's the final piece! It started out as such a simple drawing but now it looks pretty dope, dont it? :]
romaincrisis
baratheonpilled
tangentwithtanner
