How do you do that? LOL I have no idea what I’m doing (maybe) An Art Tutorial
Folks have commented on my more rendered art recently and I’m flattered. I literally have no idea what I’m doing. Well, I sorta do. I am mostly using masks in Procreate. I’m technically using the Debaser Pack by True Grit Texture Supply, but you don’t really need it. All you need is some texture layers. You could even do this just by making halftones of solid color layers. I used to do a lot of digital photo collage back in the day and at one point had a huge library of scans of paper and fabrics and also random textures I saw on the street. Wood, stone, sidewalk, metal, foliage, water. Took out my digital camera (yes, it was that long ago) and snapped a photo to use. There’s also a lot of free halftone textures online.
I have a few “overlay texture” layers. I “Create Mask” and then invert the mask so I can “paint” the color on. For my more simple stuff I do just that. I add a “Deep Shadow” layer in Overlay mode of a dark brown (or teal if it’s white) to make sure the darkest shadows are truly dark. The white areas are just the mask erased. It helps that fallout ghouls are skrungly and textured to be begin with. Sometimes I select areas and add little bits of black spray paint in lots of very transparent layers.
Everything is rendered under a multiply layer of a hi-res scan of vintage newsprint.
So how about the more detailed things that came about from an embarrassing amount of shirtless photo references??? In a lust-fueled haze I realized I can have a dark layer (in my case, a “black ink texture scan” with an inverted mask underneath a color layer. The color texture layer is around 70% opacity, give or take. On that black ink layer mask I add the white highlights to the tops of forms and use the smudge tool to distribute it across the specific form. Once in a while I shut off the color layer so I can see the bare rendering layer on its own and fix things.
So I just sort of pet him. For hours.
Focusing on the LIGHT areas instead of the shadow really is a game-changer! Before, my digital art looked super muddy because I was invested in adding dark. If areas are very very dark I add that dark brown overlay layer. For tattoos it’s a dark blue overlay mode layer, but with a mask on it so I can softly erase areas to make it look more set in to the skin (without destroying the original art). Very bright areas and the tops of forms I add a “highlight layer” of pure white gestural lines.
Moral of the story is just play around and do whatever. The old times of having a beautifully perfect anime-style drawing with very formal layers of shadow, highlight, color has been dead for ages. It’s what kept me away from pursuing digital art for literal years.
