How I use my digital halftones!
As promised, here is the explanation of how I used my halftones brushes for my manga and other stuff I make <3
First things first, you can get the halftones here, it's an open pricing and apparently it works for Procreate and Photoshop (Thank you very much Victoria Douglas / Halftone Hospital for all these tools!).
I know that there must be maaaany other ways to use these tools, and maybe there are much more practical ways to use it than what I'm about to explain; this post is just meant to share what I learned so far by testing stuff and trying to make my pictures look pretty (>'-'<)
Here is what the brushes look like in procreate ( I circled the ones I use myself ) :
First, I determine what part will be in which tone; the lighter one can overlay other tones, but if you make the dark and the medium ones overlay for example, it will look rather strange:
I usually do all the volume work and overall shadows with the lightest tone only, in order to keep a sense of unity in the picture. Other tones are applied much more flatly over big areas in order to make the picture more readable; for example, the dress, the desk, the frames behind and other details are darker.
So I always start with the light tone and make all the shadows, and I end with the darkest tone that I don't use much (I tend to leave most of the dark areas in full black). Please note that the halftones brushes can't be used as pencils, because the strokes overlay and become darker, and it will just look messy; also, if you change the size of the brush, it doesn't change the size of the tone patterns themselves, but only the area covered. Which is super practical.
As a result, the best way to use it is to do pretty much what you do with a real halftone, haha. You just have to select the part you want to cover with the tone, and then apply the brush un a single stroke over the selected area (I usually set the halftone brushes as big as I can so that the stroke looks homogenous for sure). Here is what it looks like:
Because I'm extremely lazy (but also because it gives a feeling of unity to the picture!) I usually try to make the whole halftone in one piece / selection. Since the drawing is big and a bit complicated here, I decided to do more parts than that, but you get the idea. As you can see here, I also do smaller parts here and there, like the nose. Because the shadows can look a bit sharp and I wanted the light that comes from the left side of the picture to be smoother, I used a tone scraper that it given with the brush pack that I use as an eraser. Here is what it looks like now:
And now, you just have to make different layers of halftones with the other ones. It's much easier now, because I just have to retrace plain areas that already exist in my lineart, in order to make details pop here and there. Here is what the other layers look like if you take them separately. I also erase some parts of it, but I try to keep it as plain as possible in order to make the picture as readable as I can:
As you can see, I always try to use these tones as a mean to distinguish different parts of the picture that could be hard to read or lack some detail.
Here is the result! I hope that my explanations were clear and that it will help some people. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask them and I'll do my best to answer! (´▽`ʃ♡ƪ)
