A V A L I

Lineart tip stuff

Here’s how I do my lineart/ base sketches for all my paintings. 

NOTE: All the images listed here are WIPs at their earliest stages, so understand that this technique is just a quick foundation for the polishing work that will need to be done before your picture can truly be considered finished!

1- Draw your lineart or sketch, depending on your technique. You can do cleanup later (which is what I always do) or refine it first if that’s what works best for you. Try to pick a color that will fit the palette of your painting, if you can’t think of one, just use brown. You can always change it later, anyway.

2- Duplicate it! Set the bottom layer to overlay (if you have no colors put down beneath it, the overlay layer will be blank. Don’t panic.) Set the duplicated top layer to Multiply, and change the opacity to about 80-90%. (You can set it to less if you like, as the less Multiply you have, the more color will show through. For paintings with bright color schemes, this tends to look really nice.)

^ Because the Chibiusa picture needs to be superbright, I made two overlay layers for more color instead of one.

^For Wrex, with a more dull and natural color scheme, I used only one Overlay layer, and kept the Multiply layer’s opacity at 96%.

I use this because it’s a quick and easy way to make your lineart match your color scheme, but don’t be afraid to branch out and try new things, too! Good luck!

My art process: A step by step guide to creating something that might be called art. (ish)

All right, so first things first, I start off with a darker shade of gray that’s close to black. And then I draw some faces. (I know, it’s not exactly in depth on the face drawing, but there are a number of fantastic tutorials out there for this already. Check out Burne Hogarth’s drawing the human head, or try out some Andrew Loomis. Hell, there’s even a great video showing you everything you need or want.) 

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Thank you! I do and I don’t! Sometimes I start with grayscale and add color via a new layer set to ‘Color’ mode (the same way you set it via ‘Overlay’) because Color mode doesn’t change the values like Overlay or Soft Light does. 

Other times I paint in straight up color, (Like Marlowe) and add a layer of pure black set to Saturation mode to check the values whenever I need it. Just switch it on or off to check.

Base drawing:

Saturation layer turned on to check values:

There’s still some fine tuning that needs to be done, as this is all still in the very early stages, but hopefully this will help you get an idea of my color process as far as values are concerned! 

For straight up grayscale painting, you can check out an earlier tutorial here. For basic color strategy stuff, look to my earlier ask here. Hope this helps!