#Trying to learn grayscale first then add color

[oriixxc]

[beffalumps]

hi there! recent art school grad here and i was wondering if u have any tips on learning color + approaching backgrounds? even though i learned a lot, i still find myself struggling with these focuses, especially colors as i never had a class that really taught me that. thanks so much 💗 your work is so lovely

First off, congrats on graduating!! Backgrounds and colors have always been the hardest for me lol tbh I still struggle a lot with colors especially, so please take everything I say with a grain of salt!

Using adjustment layers helps me a lot (especially color balance to make things more unified or complementary).

Another thing that I think has REALLY helped me with color overall is actually switching between color and grayscale.

In photoshop I set up a custom proof profile and then am able to switch back and forth by using the hotkey Ctrl + Y. This helps me check my values which, I've found if you have solid values, colors tend to work so much better even if you don't know much about what you're doing lol. Another way to do this is making a solid black layer on top of all your color layers and setting the blending mode to "Color". Then you can toggle that on and off to look at the values.

One last thing I've played with re: colors is finding a reference that has the colors I like and "crystalizing" it and color picking a palette from that.

This can be super helpful if you're having a hard time visualizing or coming up with a color palette!

As for backgrounds, they became a lot easier for me when I started looking at them like their own character. Thinking about the story I'm trying to tell, adding little details that I think would add to that or be fun and fun ways for the character to interact with it.

That and doing value sketches/just a bunch of really quick and sloppy experiments. 9 times out of 10, they don't work out, but sometimes they spark something that turns into something fun and workable!

This has gotten really long for someone that really just bs's their way through every piece, but I will say one thing that was a big game changer for me (in my personal opinion, who knows if other people think so lmao) and it's just incorporating aerial perspective. Making things a bit more blue tinted (or whatever the sky color is) and lighter as they recede into the background. Has made a huge difference for me when it comes to creating depth!

I really don't know if any of this is helpful because to be 100% honest, most of my illustrations are just product of trial and error lol. But practicing and making a lot of really bad scribbles have (I think) helped me the most, so yeah my biggest advice with anything is just look at lots of art, just draw and don't worry if it looks bad because tbh, it probably will at first. But you'll get better!

@tamberella Has a ton of amazing free resources and brushes, so if you haven't checked out their stuff, definitely do so!

@iniro also has some really nice tutorials on color (and other topics) available so I'd also recommend looking at those too!

But yeah, sorry for going on about my hair-brained process, I hope at least some of this was helpful!

[lumieron]

GRADIENT MAPS, CONTRAST, AND MORE: A TUTORIAL BY LUMIERON.

gradient maps are getting more popular in the editing circle but several lack contrast. as a result of (what i assume) lack of general awareness about eyestrain and etc., popular gradient map edits are hard to look at! but this can be fixed, like all things.

first off, it's important to learn WHY contrast in edits is good. contrast helps with perceiving things in edits, and makes it generally more pleasing to look at. lack of contrasting colors leads to eyestrain and is difficult to look at, even with those who don't usually have a problem with it.

eyestrain is usually seen as glitchy effects and flashing colors/lights but it's more than that!

it can be blurs used to make the outlines of things indistinguishable, especially if key objects like a face are blurred to a point where it's hard to tell where the lines are.

it can also be very similar colors being used together for a vast amount of the edit (see the icon on the right of the post at the top) A good way to check for conttrast is to grayscale an image. if the grays are too similar, try adding to previous layers!

i grayscale the image and here is the result! you can see that the right image is super pale and hard to look at while the rest are easier on the eyes.

good ways to add contrast to an image:

sharpen! if you're too lazy to fiddle with smart-sharpen settings, use sharpen edges or any preset sharpen tool!

go to selective colors, increase the black levels in the blacks. enhance any colors you want the focus to be and soften colors you dont want!

increase vibrance

change the blending settings of your gradient map. i tend to use multiply at a low fill but as seen above, hue/lighten work well. i like doing gradient maps toward the end to fix the colors but whatever looks best to you is the best!

just mess around w settings to see what works best! this can lead to results you never would've thought of <3

[alpinelogy]

HELLO could you tell me PRETTY PLEASE how did you make the halftone colored effect on your latest gr63 poster? tysm!

Of course!! I love talking about my graphics!!

I learned how to create the halftone effect from a guide I cannot find right now but my steps are as follows. heads up that I work in photoshop so everything is photoshop specific I fear.

Under the cut since there is a ton of images here o7

For the halftone effect

Import image of my choice and convert it to a smart object. This guide should theoretically work without a smart object with clipping and/or layer masks but smart objects look better + they keep my workspace more organized

In the smart object I create a new layer with a solid fill of #808080, convert it for smart filters (Filter > Convert for Smart Filters) and also set it to Hard Mix in the layer blending modes menu

Open the smart filters menu for the layer (Filter > Filter Gallery) and I create two layers, first Halftone Pattern with the following settings and on top of it Torn Edges with the following settings

You can fiddle with these obviously but I have never changed these since I started using this for my halftone effect

4. Now your image probably looks like this, really wonky and bright

To fix it I create a new adjustment layer, usually Levels but I have used Curves before as well and fiddle with it until I like it. Dont be afraid to use multiple and just mask it! For example here Tadejs jersey is white but the background is black so to keep the texture I masked the jersey and adjusted it separately.

Final effect vs adjustments to keep the background texture vs adjustments to keep the jersey texture. By combining the latter two I achieved what I wanted

If I want my image in grayscale I also add a Black & White adjustment layer in between my initial image and the Levels layer, though for the effect I achieved with the George graphic we dont want that.

Gradient colors

First of all I make all my multicolored graphics using gradient maps. I am not particularly knowledgeable so my apologies but I cannot even try to begin explaining gradient maps.

So for a multi colored effect I create a gradient map once I have an image that I am satisfied with and adjust it until it looks good. Important that the color fully on your right on the gradient map is the color you want to have in the background which in my case is the beige I use everywhere.

After that I save my smart object as I would usually do (Ctrl + S) and exit to the main graphic and ideally, it should look the same in your graphic as the smart object looked.

Unfortunately I cannot help with color choices/color theory for the actual gradient map since I barely understand what is going on myself lmao. Fwiw personally I think Synth (@/jamesvowles) is awesome with colors and how they work together in his paintings so maybe he could be of any help o7

Solid colors

This is for cases like this, where all my colors are solid flat, no matter how many colors

This is where the Black & White adjustment layer mentioned comes into play. For when I do solid colors only, even with multiple like in this graphic, I create a new color layer on top of all my other layers, fill it with the color of choice, and set the blending mode to screen. no idea why screen works, someone smarter with blending modes would probably be able to explain though.

For different colors I just mask out the areas I want the color to appear in.

Final step is to combine all my layers into a folder and under that folder I create a new solid color layer with the background color of my choice, in my case beige, and set the folder blending mode to darken. Once again, I have no idea how it works but it does and that what counts to me haha, someone smarter with blending modes would be able to explain most likely.

On a final note, do experiment!! Oftentimes I like getting to the point of where I would have usually used a gradient map (so no B&W layer) and then see what I can do with blending modes! Thats how I ended up with this image of Primož, its just a yellow color fill layer set to Hue blending mode

Hopefully everything makes sense, feel free to ask more if you are confused or want to know more about any part of my graphics <3

[mauesartetc]

Hi, hope you're doing well. I'm creating planet ocs, and I kinda have a problem with one of them : venus.

So a theme I wanted for all of them is for them all to have some changes in their body (body patterns, wings, etc) because it's important to their story. but I haven't really gotten good ideas for what to give venus. And I'm also worried if whatever I give her will just make her design look more complicated. For help, she has love based powers ( hence the hearts) and she can create poisonous gas (hence the clouds on her skirt)

Also bonus question: is her design animation friendly?

Nice! You might try researching how the planet Venus has changed over the eons to give yourself some hints for how the character might change. Also, it would probably help to figure out what her arc in the story looks like. What's the lie she's telling herself, and how will she see past that lie? What does she need to learn, and how will learning it help her grow and change as a person? Once you know the inner change, you can reflect it in the outer change. And yeah, if you add things to a design, it's only natural it will grow more complicated (though not necessarily in an unmanageable way). But what if her transformation subtracted from her form instead? What if, in casting off the trappings of who she thought she was, Venus becomes who she was always destined to be?

(Just spitballing, obviously; it might not be right for the tone of the story, but it's something to think about.)

To be honest, because the color of the hearts is vibrating so much against that orange, I couldn't read them as hearts at first. I thought they were just circular spots. And because the hearts are so saturated, if we look at the image in grayscale, they disappear completely.

If the hearts had more value contrast against the orange, they'd stand out more clearly. When one color is indiscernible from another in grayscale, that's how you know one of them needs to change.

It's also worth considering if the heart shape that's so ubiquitous with earthlings would mean the same thing to someone whose theme is based on another planet. Are hearts a common symbol of love in her culture? Might she represent love with something else? If she'd keep the hearts, though, you might make them more present in the actual form of her skirt rather than just markings on it, so they have some sort of impact on the silhouette.

It might also help if her eyes were spaced farther apart for visual clarity. They kind of blend together when viewed from a distance.

Went ahead and tightened up the overall anatomy a bit as well (especially in the shoulders), just for a touch more naturalism and believability. (Also note that knowing a character's basic forms will help immensely in animating them.)

In terms of animation, I'm realizing that when people ask me if a character design is animation-friendly, the most direct yet all-encompassing way to answer that is with another question.

"Would you animate it?"

If the answer is no, the design needs to be streamlined, because it wouldn't be fair to give yourself (or others, if it comes to that) an unnecessarily laborious task. Animation's already a ton of work on its own without overly-complex designs making it more difficult, though of course the level of detail will also depend on the budget, deadlines, and the story's tone. I mentioned in another post that the Castlevania series had some pretty detailed characters, BUT the team cleverly compensated for that by using limited animation the majority of the time, only pulling out the big guns during the action scenes. So there are a lot of variables involved, but ultimately I think the first question to ask yourself is if you would be okay animating this character.

Hope that helps!

[reversemoon255]

So, on October 19th 2021, exactly two years ago as of posting this, GinjaNinjaOWO over on the YT did a very fun video discussing swapping the concepts of Pokémon's two mascots, Pikachu and Eevee. That was also when I was really getting into the swing of character/creature designing, so I wanted to try my hand at it myself. I did the original pass in about a month, but recently looked over them and went "I can do this better," so here we are.

Here's the first pass from 2 years ago (before I got my tablet). I kept the first few designs I worked on, adding new concepts and motifs while scrapping the final 3 designs I did. When I did them originally, I think I was feeling a bit of burnout by the end, and was just going with the first things that came to mind, rather than coming up with something really creative.

Pichu was the first one I went back over. Originally, I just tweaked June's Pichu concept designs as I was more interested in designing its evolutions. The one thing I did keep from that first draft was the cheek placement under the eyes. All baby Pokémon reference something babies do, and having these faux-tear marks that then further evolve into other things as it itself evolves was something I liked and wanted to keep. As for the patterns, I wanted to go with something very generic, or template since it was going to evolve into 8 different rodents. I also drew it in multiple poses (something I did with every design), as movement is very important to modern Pokémon.

Zazachu was the third design I worked on (we'll get the the second later). With aspects like the surfboard tail and life vest fluff, it very much informed aspects I would add to all the other evolutions. I also tried to keep the colors in mind. I imagined this being one of the three Gen 1 evolutions, and Gen 1's color palette was very influenced by being sprites first, so I tried to choose colors that would be distinct when grayscale.

The second new Gen 1 design is Hirachu, a Flying-Type. One of the things I was trying to keep in mind was to not limit myself to the Types Eevee uses, and instead use ones that fit either Pikachu or the gimmicks I wanted to use. Since Pikachu was well known for learning Surf and Fly in Gen 1, I thought I'd incorporate that not only into its Types, but into its evolution method, having Pichu evolve into Pikachu, Zazachu, or Hirachu based on whether you teach it Flash, Surf, or Fly (all of which are HMs and have infinite uses). In Gen 1, I imagine it would evolve immediately after learning the move, but this would change in Gen 2 for reasons we'll discuss soon.

As for design elements, its spots and fluff are meant to invoke an aviator scarf and goggles, and I think I did a good job of illustrating how it uses its tail. I imagine the balloons are created by it secreting a sticky substance from the spots on its back to mimic how Pikachu would summon balloons when it used Fly in games like Pokémon Stadium.

We now move onto the Gen 2 designs with Orachu (which is a Jojo reference). Most Pikachu-like, and all Eevee designs are used to demonstrate a gimmick introduced in its introductory game. Pichu is breeding, Plusle and Minun are double battles, Pachirisu is the physical-special split, Dedenne and Sylveon are Fairy-Type, Pawmi is movement-based evolutions, Espeon and Umbreon are the day-night cycle, and Glaceon and Leafeon are location evolutions.

I wanted to keep with the breeding theme Pichu used in Gen 2, as well as the evolution method I started using in Gen 1, so Orachu evolves by leveling up while knowing Counter, which Pichu could only learn through breeding in Gold and Silver.

But then, if Pichu evolves by leveling up while knowing one of four different moves, what would happen if it knew two or more? That's where our second Gen 2 design, Nanichu, comes in. This was a design I had a lot of fun with. It's a Ghost-Type, and I thought it'd be cool to make its eyes and cheeks match and glow in the dark (similar to Umbreon) so that it looks scary if you came across it in a dark alley (or your pantry). As I evolved the design in the second pass, I added the scruff and changed up the tail to add even more to that theme.

As we move onto Gen 4, I wanted the two designs to be based on the physical-special split. Originally I had a physical Psychic-Type and a special Steel-Type, but I wasn't happy with either of them, so I scrapped them both and started fresh. The first new Gen 4 design I made was this special Dragon-Type, Ukichu. I liked the idea of a rabbit coming out of a hat, but to tie it more into the magical elements of Dragon-Types I incorporated a lot of elements from the Jackalope and Wolpertinger. I moved the cheek spots to below the collar to mimic a bow tie, but also made the horns on its head red to keep that visual element present in the face. This one feels a little busier than all the others thanks to the fluff, but it still feels like it fits.

And as Ukichu is special, its partner in Gen 4 had to be physical, hence the Ice-Type Sharichu. I feel like there isn't a ton to say about this one. I made it very snowman-y, and had it so it could freeze over the brown parts of its fur for attacking or defending. I think I did a good job of illustrating how it works.

And as both Dedenne and Sylveon were Fairy-Type, it stands to reason my Gen 6 counterpart should be as well. My first take on Fuwachu was very just-Sylveon, so I really wanted to break away from that on this take. As Fairy-Types are heavily associated with both being tricksters and gemstones, I tried incorporating both those elements into this design, with the necklace motif, crystalline tail claw, and its tail resembling itself from the back to trick others.

And the last design we'll talk about is Pikachu. Of course. This is actually my third pass on Pikachu, as I wasn't happy with my second. It stuck too much to the original and didn't incorporate some of the elements I used in the other designs. I still didn't change a lot, adding the tail cloud on the second pass so it would have the brown element and functionality all the other evolutions I made have. And on the third pass I gave it an adventuring bandana, which felt on-brand for Pikachu in any universe.

Overall, this was a fun experiment, and I can imagine how easily you could expand upon it. If Pikachu and Eevee are swapped, then is that true of the show? Since Meowth is a cat chasing a mouse, would it be swapped out to match Eevee? What Eevee evolutions would replace the Pikachu clones? How would all these things domino to affect the series? etc. I drew 43 Pokémon for this in total (not all pictured here), so it was a lot of work, and I hope you enjoyed this little design doc, or at least the pretty pictures if you didn't bother reading. And here's the crappy shiny edit, if you're curious.

[mochiwei]

how many wips do you have going at any given time? i work full time, and i only get weekends to do fan art.. so i told myself that no matter how many idea sketches i had, i would only work on one piece of art at a time and not start another until its done! this means i don't put out work too regularly lol.. so just curious as to how other artists that do art full time work! :D

Hi Anon!

Thank you so much for your question, I’m more than happy to share my experiences with WIPs!

First I organize my sketches and WIPs into folders based on what they’re for: zines, personal work, commissions, etc

Some of these canvases are just sketches that *may* turn into full illustrations but most of them are WIPs. I didn’t include my commission or other zine folders, which brings the number up a lil’ more!

I tend to bounce around WIPs based on when they’re due. First I’d warm up with a limited palette challenge, then I’d work on some line art, followed by adding flats to another piece. Then I’d sketch out some more ideas and add on to the ever-growing WIP pile.

During Linktober, or when it’s close to a certain deadline, that’s when I’ll focus on one piece until it’s finished. Like I said before, usually I’d bounce around and take breaks in between stages. That helps me take a step back and see the piece with fresh eyes at a later time.

One piece took me a whole year to complete! Thankfully it was a personal, original illustration so I was my own client 🫣 During that long break I learned a lot more about color, painting techniques, etc, so I was pretty happy with how it turned out even though it took a while!

That being said, this is how I approach full illustrations with background, lighting, rendering, the whole pie. If you notice painting is taking a while, then try including some shortcuts in your process! For example, using the lasso tool to color wider spaces, coloring in grayscale, and then using Gradient map on top help loads with digital art. With traditional art, blocking in colors and focusing on values help bring a piece to life quickly!

Also if you’re interested in posting more frequently, feel free to share your sketches and WIPs along the way! Please don’t feel pressured to meet a certain metric, your art making process should reflect what you want to get out of it - are you studying certain techniques? Or vibing and going with the flow?

However you go about it, don’t sweat over the number of WIPs you have. When you feel like going back to a certain WIP then that’s the perfect time to work on it!

I hope this helps and happy art making!

[stephjvin]

Applying tutorials to Your Work

Hi! I've got a lot of things cooking back in my studio, but since it's a Wednesday I thought I'd share some helpful-ish advice that I've gained since being an artist since like, middle school.

Tutorials are awesome bits of knowledge! But something I rarely see get addressed is how to add it to your own workflow.

Artist all work differently, so usually after I see a tutorial I make a big canvas by dragging in MS Paint (If you can, some tutorials only work in the program of choice) and start following the tutorial.

For example, I love manga screen tones. I've seen so many tutorials on how to do them in CSP & Paint Tool SAI. Ergo, I wanted to apply this knowledge to my current artwork. I open a huge canvas in CSP. Download the brushes/materials I need and try them out on some line-art I scanned in.

This is how it looked before. I did my usual Black & White trad. inks for lineart and added turn white to opacity feature on.

After following the tutorials as close as possible, here's how it ended up looking.

Because my style is more cartoony/simplistic with cell-shading I applied my grayscale then converted this into screen-tones using a layer feature in CSP.

Now, what if a tutorial doesn't apply well to your particular flow/ style choices? Take what else you've learned from the tutorial & apply it using your established methods.

I didn't use gradients because it looked to different from my usual line art. I didn't use special brushes because it looked too precise. It's okay to fiddle with the key points of the tutorial until you find a good fit.

I like to think of it like class notes - You get the key concepts first. Then, you turn around and apply it through trial and error.

Note that if you haven't found a workflow that you like that it's time to apply the tutorials in high gear.

Half of my art journey was finding what I liked as far as rendering drawings. Do I like cell-shaded work? Do I like realism or more graphic-styled cartoons? Do I like bright colors or muted colors? Etc.

Happy Drawing! :D

[primaverabutitalreadyexists]

Hey, thanks a lot for sharing that process video, I always feel like I learn a lot with them. Do you mind me asking you a question? I see you use greys ale first and then colorise, any reason why? I know it's recommended by some, but also discouraged by others. Mostly based on the arguments than your shadows will be more flat, instead of taking colour theory into account (putting blue in the shadows of your red fabric for example).

I'm generally unbothered, but I am still fairly new to digital, and when painting irl the greyscale to colour pipeline isn't an option so... Just curious to hear your arguments in favour of it, I guess?

That’s a very interesting question, thank you! I’ll try to answer with the best of my ability, but keep in mind that I’m no professional nor there are wrong or right way to paint, the most important thing is to find the technic that will fit you.

The reason why I use grayscale is because it’s a big time saver when I create detailed illustrations with environment, it allows you to focus primarily on the values, and values are the most important thing when it comes to painting a scenery for exemple. First because you’re only using a limited range of gray values; it’s way easier, because you’re not lost in the vast choice of colors, and second because it sets the main focus of the painting. While closer objects tends to be darker, long distance objects will be lighter. Of course, its not a unique rule, depending on your light source, closer objects can be brighter than your background. But you get the idea, grayscale helps you determine how you will use values to set up the mood and the structure of your piece. By using it, you can give a near finished look to a thumbnail or a sketch made only with shapes, just because your values are cohesive. It’s a very useful technic when working for a project that requires a lot of different sketches, with différents setups, lighting, and mood. Because in no time you can create several different primary ideas and even though it’s still at a rough stage, you can look at them and understand what the finished product will look like.

Now, grayscale has its pros and cons ofc, it’s not the ultimate technic. First, there’s a lot of tinkering to do once your grayscale thumbnail is done. If you try to apply your colors above your layers and leave it as it is, it’ll be muddy, because well, your gray values are.. gray. So you’ll have to use a lot of different features to change the hue of the shadows: gradient maps, color balance, saturation, opacity, curves and brightness. And that’s where grayscale might be more difficult for traditional artists. Second, It might be more difficult as well if you didn’t learn color theory first. Because at the end of the day, you’ll still have to use colors to finish your artwork. But, keep in mind that your lighting will greatly influence on your colors, may it be warm or cool. That’s something you have to think about when applying your first row of colors. If it’s a cool blue light, it will influence the color of the skin, the fabric, the furnitures, your skin will be a bit more pinkish or purplish, you’ll add blue and purple in your red fabric etc. it all depends on your choice of lighting and shading. Once your layers are merged into one normal layer again, you can start rendering and emphasize some colors, apply subtle touches of a particular hue to make the subject « pop » a bit more.

In conclusion, grayscale is a very useful tool when creating the structure of your painting, a good way to set the atmosphere of the piece, but it requires a lot of trials and error, learning values and how light interacts with environment. Some people are only using grayscale, other despise it, it really depends on what you feel more comfortable with, really.

I hope it helps, I’m sorry if it wasn’t very clear I wish I could just idk project my thoughts directly on my phone in a perfectly written synthesis Ahah

[pastelpaperplanes]

How do you do the gradients in your art work? I’m knew to digital art and I’m kinda stuck

I’m still getting used to gradients myself! Recently my program (Procreate) offered an option for Gradient Maps, as far as I know they can help spice up your grayscale flats when applied—this function I STILL haven’t tried or experimented with—so I’ll just kinda share my older and current method of applying gradients instead! Maybe once I do some of my own experimentation on the maps I can add on to this post ✨

ANYWAYS: the quickest way I do gradients on Procreate is literally by scribbling my chosen colors on a clipped mask to the flats, then blending them together through a blur

it’s the simplest way I’ve learned even if it may not be the ‘most correct’! As for how I choose my colors, I either follow a palette or I just eye ball the colors, either way I mess w the colors all to my own preference on what looks good to me!

now on my OLD program Autodesk Sketchbook they had a far easier way of color filling gradients:

they had ready-to-go options which was really nice! The standard line right off the bat gives you three different points to add a color—but you can knock it down to two OR add more by dragging a dot off the line, or by tapping the line to add more points to place a color.

You say you’re new to digital art? I recommend playing around with your program and try seeing waht they have to offer! Both of the programs mentioned here allow for color fills/gradients w entirely different methods, see what’s going on with your program and try experimenting!

As for choosing you colors for a gradient, try looking up some color swatches first or you can try eye balling it, referencing swatches first may be the best option at first though to try and learn what works for you.

Hope this helps anon!

[ot3]

your last post made me think about how I loooove how you use color in your art, it's so vibrant and full of life and movement and expression! I was wondering if you had any advice on how to do color studies? perhaps doing drawings with limited palettes? or anything similar?

First things first, thank you, I really do appreciate comments like these! this post now also has a follow up for finish limited palette pieces

I'm obviously very fond of limited palette art and color studies/color thumbnailing are great ways to get that done. When people think limited palette there's often the association of unrealistic and fantastical color palettes, but learning to limit your color use absolutely applies to semirealism and just builds stronger color theory in general. I was planning to talk about limited palettes in more realistic color use in this post, but this already ended up way too long. If that's something people want to hear about I can talk about it later.

Color theory basics crash-course! I'm sure almost anyone who has colored anything is familiar with this, so I'll be SUPER brief, but I want everyone to be on the same page for this. Color has three qualities you need to take into account: Hue, saturation, and brightness. Hue is what we think of as the 'color'. Saturation is the vibrancy of this color; how bold or dull it is. Brightness is how light or dark the color is. Here's this all labeled on a color picker I stole from google.

As a rule of thumb, things that look good in color should look good in grayscale. Having a strong range of values (brightness) makes for a strong image. Keep this in mind when you're picking colors – knowing what areas need to be light and what areas need to be dark before you start coloring will make your life easier. I'm going to teach you when and how to break this rule later, but for now let's just talk about picking a palette. I've found five to seven different colors to be a really nice sweet spot for working with limited palettes.

There are three main types of color palettes ill work with and ill provide examples each of them. I expect you to all politely refrain commenting on the amount of homestuck fanart that's here.

Monochromatic, where the piece is all within one color family with slight variations in hue, and larger variations in brightness and saturation

Accent, which is essentially the same as a monochromatic type with the addition of a strong, contrasting secondary color in one or two variants. Normally the accent color is lighter and serves as a highlight. This is not any kind of a hard rule, but is instead just what I like.

Split. There are two (or more) main colors at play, each with a couple of different shades.

Cool. Now lets see how we'd go about making one of these palettes.

 I'm grabbing an inconsequential sketch i've already got and we're gonna slap some color on it. Let's start monochromatic – I've gone and just tossed six pretty random shades of green on it, picking what goes where based on what I want to be light and what I want to be darker. 

Keep in mind, by monochromatic, I don't mean just picking one color and making it lighter or darker! Adjust your hue within the same color family – some of these are very blue, definitely more blue than green, and some are much warmer and yellower. Play around. In this stage I like to have every color on a distinct layer, so I can just recolor the entire layer at once as I tweak the palette.

 On the right, I have each color lined up in order of lightest to darkest just so I can get a sense of what I'm working with. Lets go ahead and call this one thumbnail. Now I'm gonna group the layers, duplicate them, and flatten the copy. I'll shrink it down and shove it off to the side so I can compare it to the other ones I make later.

Okay, I did a few more almost completely arbitrary monochromatic palettes. Here they are compared with their grayscale counterparts. 

All of them have the same number of colors, and lights stay lights, darks stay dark, midtones stay mid consistent between all of them, but the range of values is different between them all. The difference in light or dark between each tone is different and it gives a different mood that you can see even in black and white. None of them is more 'correct' than any other, and it's all about establishing the tone and atmosphere you want. Experimentation is key.

Now lets try making this a complimentary palette. With a strong accent color, your accent should be placed at areas of importance. People are naturally drawn to contrast and when using an accent color in a piece it'll make that area stick out, so make sure you're placing your colors with intent. For this I went back to that first set of greens I had because it was my favorite. Since this palette is over all very dark, I am going to make my accent the lightest color, because that'll stand out more. In a lighter palette, try making your accent the darkest color. Once again I must stress these are not hard rules – there are very few hard rules in art at all – but these are very useful tips for getting emphasis in the right place. This is just an example piece so I'm not being huuugely thoughtful with how I'm placing the color. 

Here's the same image but with the lightest green just swapped out for a far more vibrant accent of yellow. Looks pretty terrible. I don't want all of the papers and blinds to seem so prominent. So let's scrap this and try a different approach. We're gonna instead add our accent as a sixth color to our palette.

By adding another color, I've added another level of detail. Figuring out how to manage detail isn't just dependent on how many colors you have, but this is already going to be ridiculously long so I'll spare you that spiel. This is another one of those things I'll talk about more later if people want to hear my #thots. Using the new yellow accent, I emphasized the eyes, the mug, and added some interior detailing to the objects on the table. I also decided to place yellow in some of the windows of the outside buildings, to add a bit more interest in that area, and to justify giving yellow back lighting to our little goblin lad here, which makes him stand out nicely.

A split palette makes things a whole lot more complicated. Now that you're gonna be working with two different base colors you don't just only have to worry about which one is lighter or darker, you have to worry about how the hues look next to each other. Lets work with an orange on top of our original green here. I picked two of the greens and replaced the darker one with a darker orange, and the lighter one with a lighter orange. Now our palette is six colors split 50/50 between orange+yellow, and green. 

But now something interesting is happening. Let's take a look. If you're particularly keen eyed, you might have noticed that there's a third set of colors here, using a greyish brown in place of the oranges. What's up with that?

Well, what's up with that is, they are orange. The palette on the far right is what happens if, instead of choosing my own oranges, I simply hue-shifted the bluegreens until they were technically orange in hue. 

The oranges I chose just based on how they looked without actually checking the value and saturation of actually changed the value hierarchy of the whole piece. The table, instead of being in between the objects stacked upon it in terms of brightness, is lighter than either. This isnt bad at all – there's absolutely nothing wrong here. It's just important to be aware of things like this! This is why I said a split palette is the most complicated of the three I'm talking about here – in many occasions, the hue hierarchy can top the value hierarchy. Keep that in mind for slightly later.

I think split palettes work really well for comics, and I like to make my comics with split palettes. Whereas with a single illustration, you can just putz around with your color thumbnails until you get something good, for a comic you're locked into your palette once you've done the first page. Unless you're some sort of insanely meticulous person, in which case I envy you, you probably don't have every single page of your comic blocked out with respective values and can't apply your palette to the whole thing at once to test it. This means you'll need a palette that's pretty versatile. Having a split palette where one of the hue sets is lighter than the other overall allows you to decide whether you're going to create an overall light panel with dark accents, or vice versa. I'm gonna compare two palettes I'm using for comics to make this point. 

Here's a sampling of the comic pages in full color, at 0% saturation, and adjusted for grayscale respectively. You'll notice a slight difference between the desaturated colors and the grayscale colors – grayscale seems to hold truer to the full color version, doesn't it?

Now, here are the palettes themselves, and some grids showing the relationship between every pair of colors. When you don't know exactly what you're going to be using any given palette for, the relationship between any two colors becomes more important than ever. The bottom palette is split three ways, red yellow and blue each with a light and a dark, and then a completely neutral dark gray color. I'm using it for a long ongoing ace attorney comic I'm drawing. The top one has 4 shades of blue that go from darker and cooler to lighter and warmer, then 3 shades of orange that get yellower as they get lighter. Underneath is just the values – you'll notice that the top palette has a larger value range, with its lightest color being lighter than that of the bottom palette, and it's mid tones spaced further apart. 

What you'll also notice about the bottom palette is that instead of the reds being lighter than the blues and darker than the yellows, the value alternates dark red dark yellow light red light yellow. Take a look at the color grids. You'll notice that for the most part, every color in the palette on the right looks good with every other color. That's not nearly as true for the palette on the left. The light blue has a weird vibration where it meets either of the reds, and a few of the pairings just aren't particularly pleasant. Honestly, from any objective ideas of color theory, this palette kind of sucks shit. Lets make some adjustments to it.

I've changed the dark yellow and light red hues so now the light red is slightly darker than the dark yellow. That's the palette that's on top now. Looks better, doesn't it? But so now the question becomes why am I using a palette that looks awkward, disharmonious, and visually strained when I know exactly how to fix it? The simple answer is because I wanted a color palette that's awkward. I wanted that visual strain. I have trouble working on comics and general, especially anything as long as this one, and I wanted a color palette that already meant things would come out looking a little bit wonky, so I wouldn't be as concerned with nitpicking all the details and making everything pretty. I think the sort of visual upset also fits the tone I'm keeping with a lot of the comic.

Remember earlier when I said I'd talk about breaking the rule of stuff looking good in gray scale and in color? That's now. Take a look at this image. 

Which of the three colors is darker: the red, blue, or yellow? The stupid truth of it is that there's not really a proper way to tell. All three are technically the same 'brightness' but our brain tells us that the blue is the darkest, and the yellow is the lightest. Why do our brains do this? Let’s make em gray now.

On the bottom you can see what the colors look like when they are set to 0% saturation; as you'd expect it's a homogeneous gray blob. So then what the fuck is going on with the grayscale one? The grayscale one is closer to the way our brains interpret the colors, but we know this to be an improper rendering of their respective values. Which is the correct version, then – the grayscale or the desaturation? Luckily, we're using a computer, so we can have photoshop tell us the exact balance of hue, saturation, and brightness of any given pixel. Let's take a look now.

Wait, huh? We can plainly see that all three of the colors are at 49% brightness. But neither the desaturated value or any of the 3 grayscale values have a brightness of 49%. So what does a brightness of 49% look like?

Okay. Sure. Why not.

All of what I've just shown you regarding grayscale is to emphasize the point that your best judgment for which colors look good is a far better measuring stick for a good color palette than any technicalities. Even if the value is the same, the hue can differ enough that you can still get a beautiful finished drawing. Color and our perception of it is so, so vastly technically complex. You can not allow yourself to be bogged down by this. Simply practice, and color will become intuitive to you over time. I have a lot more I could say on the subject of picking and using your colors, but this is already insanely long. Feel free to ask any follow up questions, I hope this was of literally any use!

[taikova]

Hi! I'm really new to drawing digitally but i really love it. Im also so in love with your art and was wondering if you had tips (specifically for coloring/detailing), because a problem i have is colors looking a little to harsh or flat. I use photoshop right now but am open to trying different software suggestions.

hi, and thank you! :3

i have answered some art asks before, and there are some more tips about CSP tools somewhere in there, so try going through the “asks” tag on my blog for tips. also, these are just my thoughts on how to improve and how i WANT to improve atm, so take this with a grain of salt. if you don’t want to do all this, or just want to concentrate on one of these things, or NONE of these things, that’s perfectly allowed. a lot of these are “pro painting illustrator” tips i’ve absorbed from various sources, but they aren’t the “end-all, be-all” of making art, even for me. YOU can just do what you wanna do, no pressure at all.

this is a cliché but i think it’s true: these rules are meant to be bent, but it helps to bend them if you understand the rules first. 

If you wanna learn painting, or just.. want to understand how and why pro painters get their colors to look so good, i recommend learning at least some fundamentals of art like uh.. values, composition, lighting (it helps me that i remember there are all sorts of light going on, like bounce light, ambient light on top of the imagined main light source) and using a lot of references. pro illustrators have a really good grasp on lighting, generally, and even on a more cartoony or less realistic style, i helps me a lot to do some painting studies of these fundamentals. It also takes a lot of trial and error and failed attempts.

With colors, it’s really important to recognize how colors work relative to each other. if you add grey, or rather, desaturated colors in places that you don’t necessarily want to draw rhe viewers attention to, it will make the brighter hues or colors (for example the opposite color on the color wheel) pop more. depending on your style it’s easier to make your art look good with brighter colors, and by using multiply layer style for shadows etc.. but you should understand at least a little bit of color theory, so i recommend looking into all of that.

i also recommend you avoid using black (or at least, ONLY black) to shade your art unless you’re making a desaturated (grayscale) picture in the first place. it always makes the pretty colors you chose turn muddy. shadows HAVE colors, so very dark hue of any bright color is almost always better than straight up black (in my experience). If you start with black lineart, you can lock the transparent pixels in photoshop (in the layers box), and use any brush to change that hue. 

when i want to learn composition and good colors, it helped me to start learning values first by painting in only gray hues, and adding color after (like with layer styles like “color” and “overlay”. it may not make the colors look successfully pretty often times, but at least the composition and the play between shadows and light would work and make the art look nicer?

also, at some point (i recommend starting immediately, I Need To Do This More Myself) think about the sketching with the colors+shadows in mind. maybe try to use lines to separate where your colors and shadows change! when you’re sketching, don’t think of it ONLY as, “here’s the line of where the shirt ends, and where the nose ends” think of it like.. this is where the nose curves, so it creates a shadow THIS big and in this direction. just as an example. i TRY to do that as often as i can remember nowadays, so that the coloring will be much more comfortable later, because then i’d have made the sketch with the goal of making the values, shadows and colors look good. here’s a pretty good video on sketching like faces this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJkIaMECW6c

and.... ALL of the above requires reference to “get”, whether it’s well-lit photographs or other artists’ work, it’s always recommended to use reference. it’s not shameful, all artists need to use it, no matter how good they are. only thing you need to be aware of is to avoid posting straight up copies of others art, especially if you make money out of it (i think just drawing for fun and posting fan stuff is fine, if the reference is famous or you provide the reference...). but it’s recommended you find good references for what you want to draw. art studies that help you improve some part of your art always require them.

all of this is really hard to explain without visual aid, but i recommend channels like “tyler edlin” on youtube, who critiques student work and posts videos about tips for painting. his channel is more for environments but the tips often apply to any object or figure. i think this channel is the one of the only pro art mentor types i have found that i can stand (the critique is sometimes kinda harsh and tiring, though not always, but if you don’t want to see that or it makes you feel unmotivated, stop watching and look at some art or mentor for inspiration instead).

check out “astri lohne”’s youtube too, she paints characters and has some real cool paintings and couple of tips on improving your art!

(this clickbait title lmao. but i remember this has some good info about lighting): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpAIdEcNJaM

someone who has some really nice, bright colors and fun painting videos, is Laura Price/lulusketches, who also worked on Steven Universe! Her whimsical colors are inspiring. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS3ZMbzTOXdDuJlhAZuXgaw

i don’t really have tips at this point for cartoony art, but.. these fundamentals have helped me choose how i color, even the flat colors with multiply layers for shadows. Tools to learn for coloring in these are: the lasso tool, “selection” options like “select color gamut” or “color range” (it selects only one limited color range: you can adjust that range too, so you can fix that color or add more hues into that block of color you have in your drawing), locking the transparent pixels option, learn what each layer style does, try adjusting the colors sometimes... just... there’s a lot photoshop or CSP can do, as long as you learn the program properly. i don’t really know how to give you any software tips, you should probably google photoshop tips for drawing, or find photoshop tutorials! I use clip studio paint, and that is a really good program for digital art imo!

i have a yt channel where i put sped up videos of my fanart, so you can see how i sometimes draw and color things (i haven’t made any hardcore painting videos, they’re mostly about lineart drawings). if you go to the website version of my tumblr you can find a link there in my sidebar. or by going through my art, i post links to those videos on here too. i hope all that helps.

[astrhae]

omg I need a full tutorial on how you do your edits on powerpoint because sis my edits trying to have even a little hint of *amazingness*

Hi! First of all your edits are beautiful and I am queuing them up 💛 and again, I'll never be as adept as the Photoshop gods, but since both you and @achalk asked, Powerpoint is surprisingly easy to use after some practice and is adequate to make edits, especially if you’re a beginner like me. I’m also still learning about color and fonts and other aesthetics.

A lot of it is trial and error, which is why I never look at my older edits cause they were definitely more on the error side, but I can break down some of my newer edits so you know what went on in there. 

What usually takes a long time in edit making (especially graphics) is finding the right movie frames/pictures. The pictures I use are frames from movie files that are larger than 3gb. A truly marvellous place to find those files are in this post by @in-a-cave-with

Figuring out how to arrange things is a balance between what picture you want to make and what the edit is about. for my last edit all the circular shapes was supposed to be like the arc reactor’s circle but that point might have been missed.

Anyway, I have no idea about your skills but under the cut we start with the very rudimentary basics and then I’ll dissect some of my edits for you. please excuse the messiness of my Powerpoints windows

The Basics

First of all, it depends on what version of Powerpoint you have. My university gives us free access to the Office 365, so that’s the version I’m working with.

I’m pretty sure a lot of the features I use most often (shapes, arranging, and animations) are available on all versions, though.

The gridlines are really helpful with positioning, and you can use the space beside the slides to add notes. 

Also, to change the slide size, go to the Design -> Slide Size -> Custom Slide Size.

Usually, I use a width of 33.867 cm, which is the default for my Powerpoints and that translates nicely to 1280 pixels when you save as a PNG file. 

The 1280 pixels is a multiple of 540 pixels, which is the width that tumblr rescales your images to, so it balances the quality of the image with tumblr’s determination to ruin that quality.

What I usually modify is the height of the slide, and that’s a balancing act. You want enough space to fit what you want, but not too much to crowd the dash. Nobody knows anymore what the maximum height limit is for tumblr but I try to keep the height below 60 cm for proportionality.

Note: each Powerpoint file can only have one slide size. So if you want to make one graphic but using two different slide sizes, you need two Powerpoint files.

Usually, I stick to one slide size per graphic so that it doesn’t confuse people.

Finally, Arranging things is really useful. This allows you to have multiple “Layers” in your slide.

Creating Templates

Shapes in powerpoint are a beautiful thing. And the most useful thing is that you can fill a shape with a picture or with a gradient. 

After you fill a shape with a picture, you can go to Format -> Crop. Then, you can resize that picture.

If you have the Draw tab in your Powerpoint, that’s also great for you to draw your own lines and shapes to give things a more authentic feel. You can find the Draw tab here if you have the right version of Powerpoint.

The Corrections option (see picture below, it’s the one with the sun icon) under the Format tab is great for quick adjustments to the brightness and contrast of a picture, and for saturation or grayscale adjustments you go to Color right next to it. 

Artistic effects are useful to blur a picture, and if you want to adjust even further, you can go to Options at the very bottom of the pop-up which brings up a side panel for you to fine tune everything.

Notice that on the left of Corrections there is Remove Background. This is very useful as long as your picture has a clear background and foreground.

Shapes can also create a “template” for when you have more than ten images (which is the tumblr limit). You can put two images into one slide easily using the shape as a template so that the images are of the same size.

Gradients are nice to add some vibrance to your edits, and Powerpoint lets you adjust the angle of the gradients for variation.

Other useful features include the text shadow effect and the spacing of letters.

To see how you can use shapes as templates, let’s look at some of my edits.

Anatomy of a Slide I

Let’s break this graphic edit down from my Tony Stark + Combat History edit. It has 12 parallelograms, 12 rectangles, 10 icons, 10 textboxes, 3 lines, and a texture background.

This is what the slide looks like as I put the first picture in.

In the end result, the slide consists of:

5 parallelograms filled with a picture. 

2 parallelograms at the sides are just filled with color. 

5 more parallelograms are arranged on top of the 5 earlier parallelograms, and filled with a color. The transparency of the shape is adjusted so that it creates a sort of color filter for the pictures.

4 of the rectangles are filled with a picture. 

4 rectangles are put on top of them, filled with color, transparency adjusted to again create a color filter. 

Then, the 4 smaller rectangles at the end of the large rectangles are just filled with color. They are there simply for aesthetics :)

The 10 icons are the medals and the wreath. To find icons in Powerpoint, you can go to Insert -> Icons. Icons is right next to Shapes for me. You can change the color and transparency of Icons too!

The three lines are just to make everything look a tiny bit more cohesive and linked.

The texture background is a paper texture. To find texture backgrounds, there’s this really amazing resource post!

After the slide is done, you can save your slide as a PNG image (save as PNG and not as JPEG because JPEG is lossy and tumblr destroys it) by going to Save As -> PNG. You can choose to save one slide only or all the slides.

That’s it. You’re done making a graphic edit :)

Notice that one of the save options is save as a GIF. That does not work unless you have the newest version of Powerpoint. I don’t have it, so in order to create GIFs, we need to find a workaround, which I explain next.

Anatomy of a Slide II

This GIF from my Tony + Ethics edit has 8 components/objects in it.

A black and white picture (a screenshot of Tony, cropped in Powerpoint and also turned black and white by adjusting the Color and Saturation in Powerpoint)

The color cutout of Tony.

Two lines (called Straight Connectors in the animation pane)

Four textboxes.

In order to make them appear one by one, animations are used. Here, all of them are animated using the Fade animation. 

When you animate, make sure that the first object on the animation pane starts With Previous.

In the picture above, you can see that beside the first object in my Animation pane (the object called Content Placeholder) there’s a number 0. That means the animation starts With Previous.

Never set an animation to start On Click because then the animation won’t show up when you convert the Powerpoint to a video.

You can start an animation After Previous as long as the first animation is starts With Previous. Just never use On Click

To figure out what I mean by On Click, With Previous, and After Previous, you can check this link.

The objects with animations are the color cutout, the two lines, and three textboxes.

The color cutout is actually part of the original screenshot of Tony. I copied the screenshot, changed the saturation and brightness of it, and then removed the background using the Background Removal tool in Powerpoint. 

For how to use the Background Removal tool, check this link.

Then, the color cutout is arranged to be in front of the black and white picture, and a Fade animation is put in place so that it looks as if only Tony is coming into color.

Similar animations are used for the textboxes and the straight lines. In order to animate by letter, follow this tutorial. 

P.S. you can use emphasis animations to animate the color of a text.

Adjust the animation pane for the timing of the appearances, and present the slide to see if you’re satisfied with the final result.

The next step is how to convert the animated slide into an actual gif.

First, go again to Save As, but this time choose MPEG-4 Video (*.mp4). 

Then, you extract each frame of the resulting video and then use photoshop to turn the frames into a GIF. 

For a tutorial on how to make gifs in photoshop, check out this really amazing and blessed tutorial by @robertdowneys

Anatomy of a Slide III

The top part of this slide has 8 components/objects to it: 

3 rectangles

1 hooked shape

2 textboxes

The Stark Industries logo

The arrow

The hooked shape has a small glow effect added to the shape. Here’s a tutorial on shape effects. On that note, you can also make transparent text using various shape functions, and a tutorial for that is here.

The logo is a transparent logo downloaded from the internet, and the arrow is hand-drawn by me using the Draw tool in Powerpoint.

2 of the rectangles are filled in with the same picture and stacked on top of each other. 

Then, the top rectangle is cropped to only Tony’s hand, and a border is added. 

After that, another rectangle is arranged between the top and bottom rectangles. This third rectangle is filled in with a purplish color and transparency adjusted.

That creates a “highlight” effect for the part of the picture where Tony is working on the arc reactor. This same trick is what I used to make several parts of my ethics edits, like this GIF which I like.

Except, this time I make a circle shape first, fill that circle with the same image as the background, and adjust the size of the image to be the same as the background using the Crop tool on the circle.

Then, I make the background darker and the circle brighter using the Corrections tool. This increases the contrast between the two to create a highlighting effect.

Add a border to the circle, and add a Fade in animation.

Save the Powerpoint as a video, and turn video into GIF in photoshop.

Anatomy of a Slide IV - Inserting GIFs

Finally, you can put gifs into a slide! This GIF is from my Tony + his heart of gold edit. Make the GIF in photoshop, then just copy and paste the GIF into the slide like any other picture.

You can rotate, crop and adjust the size of a GIF in powerpoint. 

You can’t make any other adjustments (e.g. you cannot change the brightness of a GIFor the color. If you try to do that, the GIF will freeze and become a still image.)

The GIF will not play unless you present the slide.

Don’t steal GIFs :) Again go back to that blessed tutorial on how to make your own GIFs, or ask permission from GIF creators.

As you can see from the selection pane, this slide has 12 components.

The quotation mark is in a textbox of its own

3 textboxes with pink text (animated using a Fade in animation by letter), and 1 with the all caps text

2 polaroid frames arranged on top of a comic book panel (with background removed) and a GIF of Harley. 

Plus, a comic book panel of Riri with background removed

Then there are two rectangles filled with a gradient color to serve as the “background” of the slide. 

I made the bottom background rectangle a gradient that fades into white to make a more seamless transition to the next image.

You can see the GIF of Harley does not move in this view. However, when you present the slide, it will move. To check if you accidentally froze the GIF while editing, present the slide.

When you are satisfied with how the slide looks, again save it as an MPEG-4 Video (*.mp4). Then, you extract each frame of the resulting video and then use photoshop to turn the frames into a GIF.

That’s it! 

Powerpoint has all those tools, and you shouldn’t be afraid to experiment :) 

My foray into making edits was literally me, bored in class, with a presentation about data when I went... hey... that’d be nice if I put Tony’s face in it because isn’t everything better with Tony in it? 

There’re even more useful features in Powerpoint but this tutorial’s gotten really long already, so I’ll leave it at that. Hope it helped!

You can send me another ask or message me if you’re confused :)

[fourrarri]

He’d never thought himself much good at giving gifts. At least not the traditional way. A general non-interest in materialism and a fondness for practicality that grew with his age having made a habit for him of gift giving at random to address a need rather than wait for any specific occasion. Not something that anyone ever seemed to mind but had always caused him a prickle of disquiet in him when it came to birthdays, or christmas. Anytime he was left floundering for gift ideas really. Especially when the occasion for gift giving was someone near & dear to his heart & well within means to buy whatever they wanted much less needed.

Still, he’d always loved a challenge, and Lance. . . Well, the hitman was nothing if not that no? And so much more besides, as he’d been delighted to find in the time he’d gotten to know the man thus far. Knowledge he’d put to proper use making the birthday boy’s gifts over the last month. Gifts that not only fullfilled Joel’s fondness for practicality but that he hoped would meet the other’s fondness for aesthetic beauty as well. 

But perhaps above all, he hoped they’d translate how much he appreciated what Lance had been willing to share of himself with him. His openess. His history. How very genuine he always was in any response he gave him. Joel wanted to honor that. Show him somehow beyond words that he’d heard him, that he cared. That he was glad to know him. Who he’d been, was now, and if Lance was keen, who he’d become.

“I uhh--, made each of your gifts myself. Well, mostly. I didn’t actually make the packaging on these first two, just what’s inside em.”

The first of the gifts was a bottled set of massage oils. Each one had a color scheme of preserved blossoms to indicate the essential oil he’d picked for fragrance. Flowers that he’d picked himself either having found them while hiking or from various flowershops. The florals he’d then dyed, dried, arranged, glued, and set inside each bottle before adding the oils. 

It was no secret that Lance not only enjoyed attention, but absolutely thrived on it. Had made it clear on a handful of occasions that he was not above demanding it, loudly. Or turning into a complete bratling when it wasn’t given to him for longer than he had patience to wait. Lance also liked to touch, to be touched. And if Joel had thought to indulge himself his fondness for ‘taking care’ whilst gifting the man something that encouraged lavish amounts of pampering and focus all on him, well. He rather doubted the other would have issue with it.

“These are massage oils infused with aloe and other essential oils for skin care and fragrance. Should come in handy the next time the sun toasts ya a bit more than you meant. Or when you’re feeling neglected.”

The second wasn’t any less playful or indulgent. They were at a glance a bit of an inside joke, one that only a very small handful of people would probaly ‘get’ if what Lance had told him was anything to go by for how many people knew how he really made money. The gift was a set of lip balms he’d made with a mix of beeswax, shea butter, vaseline, and jojoba oil. Each one had been carefully colored with a combination of powder made out of the leftover blossoms, and food coloring to add tint to them along with their protective and restorative properties. 

The set itself was shaded from translucent to various nudes that ranged from natural pink to warmer spice hues. When adding the tint, he had paused, idly wondering if the addition of color to the balms would be too feminine a detail for Lance’s taste. A thought that had gone as fast as it’d come when he recalled the man’s new habit of painting his nails. How much value he placed in his appearence, how little he placed in social norms, how he was seemingly content to enjoy what he liked and not question it beyond that. How very fond he was of Lance for it.

His favorite part of this particualr gift however, was that the case for each one was a hollowed out, reforged, and repurposed rifle cartridge. This detail had probably been what’d taken the most work on his part but in the end he was more than pleased with the results, was certain Lance would be to, as evident in the smile curving his lips as he spoke.

“All that drinking and sunshine dries out your lips chéri. These should help with that, keep you kissable. Some of them are tinted to if you’re feeling flirty.”

The last was the only gift that he’d actually bothered to wrap. To hide. He’d wrapped it meticulously, kept the corners pristine. The paper was ocean blue, patterned with metallic designs. Tied with gold ribbon, topped in an immaculate bow. Inside was a simple white box, and below the lid, buried within more blue, delicate tissue paper was a driftwood picture frame. The frame scaled perfectly for the sketch portraying a memory Lance had described to him in detail from his childhood and coupled with his recall for the one picture Lance had, that he’d shown him upon asking. A picture of him in his boyhood and his mother.

The sketch had taken the whole day. Had been born from a deep rooted desire to somehow give Lance something of that day beyond what he held in his memory. To replicate the warmth he’d had in his tone when he’d spoken of Marianna, described her for him, how she’d been more of a mama to him than the one who’d actually given him life for the most part. 

A fact that the man himself had seemed content with upon it’s revealing but had cracked open something hot and hurting inside his throat, in his chest. Something that felt like tears. Was tears. Tears he’d furiously blinked away, turned his face & hid when Lance seemed to nearly notice. Had fallen free once home and he’d contemplated how his friend had learned to normalize loneliness. Normalize family being something you acted out for company and performed rather than actually had. Normalize not having any pictures of them in your home for everything family photos were meant to be and never had been for him. 

He hadn’t thought about it. Simply grabbed his sketch book, sat on the chaise in the corner of his living room, just beside the french doors that led out to his porch. The same ones that allowed sunlight in enough to warm him as he worked.

He’d let his hand skate across the page, pencil loose in his fingers, slowly, slowly, the shape of child Lance, the details of Marianna he’d given him coming to life. The profile of her face was hidden, back to the viewer’s sight as she turned, scanned the ocean debris at her feet, the tumble of soft sand in the churning wave line. Smile lingering at the corner of her lips. A peek of profile through her hair but only details, not her whole face. Curls tumbling down her back, the wind catching them, lifting a few stray tendrils. Pointing, reaching, directing a grinning Lance to another sea treasure she’d spotted for him to bring back home.

He wasn’t sure how many hours he’d spent on it; shading in her shadow on the sand, working to capture the gentle folds of of her sundress, capturing every detail Lance had told him about her. All he knew for certain was that it had been early noon when he’d started, and when he’d finally stopped the sun had already gone down. 

He didn’t color it. Knew he wouldn’t have to explain to Lance why. How sometimes the best and worst memories looked better in black and white? In the crisp shadows of grayscale, how if you tried to bring back too much you could lose it all? That a memory was its own breed of ghost? How he knew beyoind a doubt he could never capture the blue of the ocean, the warm shade of her eyes, the soft highlights of her hair. Like trying to pin down the wind. Same as capturing her visage without a picture, he didn’t dare attempt bringing the life of color to this memory. Didn’t want to trespass any further than he potentially had.

The smile from before fades, breath catching in his throat enough it hurts to swallow around. Makes him work to force words around his words, his feelings, how little room they leave for anything else.

“Really not good at telling people about how I feel about them when it really counts. Always preffered to show them instead so---.” the words trail off, and he reaches out a hand for the last gift, pushes it within Lance’s reach as his heart begins to hammer away at the cage his ribs suddenly are.

“Not sure if it’s anything like you remember but I wanted to do something for you. Something special. And this wouldn’t leave me alone till I finished it. Ended up drawing it the same day you told me about it. Really hope I didn’t fuck up.” He elects not to tell Lance he means in general, not just the sketch itself. 

“You mean----, a lot to me Lance. I don’t even have words for it and I have a few languages to choose from. Hasn’t helped. But I wanted you to know, wanted to show you. Anyways, happy birthday.”

       💸 ║ ❛   ————— It always overwhelms him a bit, all these feelings towards Joel and how observing he actually is. Definitely not a man he’s ever met before. And Lance had men before that showed interest in him, tried to promise him the world but in the end the motives were completely focused on the MONEY and lifestyle of the rich and famous. And it’s not like Lance never understood, money and luxury are things he himself enjoys the most as well. But that thought just always runs around his mind; people wouldn’t give a damn about someone like him if he didn’t have all the money, the cars and the big mansion. JOEL is a different kind of man though. Lance managed to convince himself that even if there wasn’t all this money and luxury, Joel would still be there. But most importantly, Joel IS actually here, between all these nice things and in the end all he cares about is putting the smile on Lance’s face. 

          Lance examines all the gifts while Joel goes off explaining the details. He does listen to what he has to say very carefully but his mind is telling him things. What is it that Joel sees in him that makes him so sure he’s deserving of these things. It only makes Lance notice that he’s only good at accepting gifts as long as he knows the person didn’t really put any effort into it. But all the effort Joel put into it, Lance doesn’t wanna ruin the good moment. Ruin it with his bad thoughts punishing him for feeling grateful for something he doesn’t quite deserve. He is pretty good at shutting his mind off if things make him too vulnerable, so that’s his solution.

          A bright smile forms on his lips while looking at all these nice things. Suddenly it just feels so warm inside him, almost pressuring as if there’s something he just has to let out. It’s just a feeling of genuine HAPPINESS that Joel manages to break free, and usually that feeling is archived once he’s had a few shots. No alcohol this time, there’s no need for it. Not even his mind is running to it. Blue eyes wander from all these beautiful gifts to Joel, only for a short moment though. He’s desperately trying to form a sentence in his head to not seem like a child who’s got all the presents it wished for. But talking, expressing himself is hard when he tries to not get over that spot of vulnerability. 

          ❝   Qué digo, qué digo.. Thank you, amorcito, honestly. I really don’t know what to say.   ❞  And just as he tries to fight his brain to throw out ANY WORDS, there is another gift coming. Joel seems much more nervous about it, much more emotional. Lance doesn’t wonder too long after he eventually unwrapped it and now examines this personal work. It just causes him to feel a lot of emotions, they just hit him like lightning, yet he’s QUIET for a moment. While there’s still this burst of happiness, there’s also an ache in his heart that’s not easy to handle. A picture like that doesn’t exist but when he looks at it it feels like there’s something real about it. Lance never had a picture of MARIANNA, but if he did he wouldn’t hide it away like he does with the picture of his own mother. Marianna deserves much more than what he’s able to give her. And the fact that Joel actually took the time to awake the memories in his heart does cause him to get very emotional about it. Things like that make him cry like a baby when he’s alone, so he’s really fighting some tears. He doesn’t wanna cry on his birthday.

         ❝   I can’t believe you did that. Man, soy demasiado emocional para esto. This is a lot. I love it.   ❞   At least he got out a little bit before his emotions make his eyes all watery. Still, he fights hard not to cry over it. So the best way to hide that is to simply throw his arms around the other man’s shoulders. The hug holds on for a moment until Lance interrupts it to place a kiss on Joel’s lips.    ❝   Merci, chérie.   ❞

[sims4ccpurgatory-blog]

A Complete Beginner’s Guide to Masking in Photoshop

Several years ago a friend of mine asked me to teach him how masks work in Photoshop. This is my incredibly late response.

We’ll go over the basics of what masks are, what they’re used for and how wielding them properly will take your Photoshop skills to an entirely new level.

What Is a Mask?

Layers are probably the single most important addition to Photoshop since the original version, but layer masks are a close second. I would posit that until you thoroughly understand how and why to use masks, you simply don’t understand the power of Photoshop.

The term “mask” isn’t immediately understandable to someone outside the realm of graphic design. At its simplest definition a mask is a way to apply something to a very specific portion of an image.

There are two primary types of masks: clipping masks and layer masks. These two tools are closely related in concept, but very different in application. Let’s start by discussing layers masks, which are generally what people are referring to when you hear them discuss Photoshop masking.

Layer Masks

A layer mask is something that you apply to a given layer to control the transparency of that layer. Where layer opacity controls the transparency of the entire layer at once, a mask gives you more precise controls over very specific areas. If you want the entire layer to be at 30%, you would lower the opacity, if you want just the left side of a layer to be at 30%, you would use a mask.

When you add a mask to a layer, it covers the entire thing with an invisible grayscale canvas. There are ways to see it that we’ll check out later but just know that as a general rule, applying a mask to a layer won’t cause any immediate visual differences unless you have an active selection at the time.

On this invisible canvas, you can paint white, black or any level of gray in-between. The color that you paint tells Photoshop how opaque to make the pixels at that point. White means 100% opacity and black means 0% opacity.

With this in mind, try to imagine what the mask below would do to a layer:

As you can see, if our mask was all white with the three circles shown above, we would have a completely visible layer where in all the white areas, and spots of transparency in the circles. If we apply this mask to a layer, this is the result:

Clipping Masks

Clipping masks are very similar to layer masks only they use one layer to determine the transparency of another. In this scenario, you stack two layers on top of each other with the bottom being the determining factor of the transparency of the top.

Instead of using black and white values though, clipping masks simply borrow transparency from the layers used to make them, namely the bottom layer. If the bottom layer has some areas that are opaque and some areas that are transparent, a clipping mask will apply these values to the top layer.

This one is hard to explain without an example, but becomes crystal clear when you see it in action. Let’s use the two layers shown below and say that our goal here is to cut or “clip” the wood layer to be in the shape of the letters. Notice that, at this point, the wood is the bottom layer and the text is the top layer.

To achieve the effect that we want, simply swap the position of the layers so that the wood is on the top, then go to the Layers menu at the top of your screen and select “Create Clipping Mask” (Command-Option-G). Voila, we now have the effect we were going for. Where the text layer was opaque, the wood layer is now opaque and where the text layer was transparent, the wood layer is now transparent.

There’s some really interesting functionality here. You can still position and make changes to each of the two layers independently. By dragging around the wood layer, you move the position of the texture inside the bounds of the letters while the letters themselves stay stationary.

Also, you can apply layer effects to the compilation via the bottom layer. For instance, here’s what happens if we select the text layer and add an Inner Shadow.

Clipping masks fun, functional and underrated, but the truth is that layer masks are far more common in every day use. The information above should be enough to get you off and running with clipping masks so from here on out we’ll focus purely on layer mask functionality.

How Do I Make a Layer Mask?

Now that we have a strong grasp of exactly what masks are and how the two different types of masks differ, let’s see how to create and work with a layer mask.

The first thing we need is two layers. I grabbed the two images below from photographers Adrian Durlea and Erik Soderstrom. The shack image is on the bottom and the fire is on the top.

The general idea here is to take some, not all, of the fire and apply it to the shack. The first step is to stack the two images as we see above and set the fire layer’s blending mode to Screen. This will make all of the black pixels transparent, which blends the two images together nicely.

With that one change, this is already a pretty decent image! Let’s say though that we want to only have fire near the door of the shack. To accomplish this, we’ll need to add a mask to the fire layer. Select the fire layer and click the mask icon shown in the image below.

Now, with the mask selected in the layers palette, we grab a soft, black brush and paint out the portions of the fire that we don’t want to see. As we do this, the fire begins to disappear. To bring it back, we simply paint white.

As you can see in the image below, with just a little painting, our fire is now much more centralized to the portion of the image that’s already lit up and therefore looks decently natural.

To see the actual mask, Option-Click (Alt-Click on a PC) on the little mask preview in the layers palette (Shift-click to hide the mask completely). After painting out some of our fire, this brings up the following:

Notice that we’re not just constrained to hard edges. The beauty of masks is that you can do anything you want with them as long as you can pull it off in values of gray. This means you can paint, clone, create and fill selections, copy and paste, and all kinds of other actions you perform on the main canvas.

Why Not Just Erase?

Upon first learning how to use masks, most rookies think the same thing: “I can already do all of this with the eraser tool.” Wrong! In fact, as far as I’m concerned, once you learn to mask, you should literally never pick up the eraser tool again because it tends to be so destructive.

What do I mean by destructive? Think about what happens when you use the eraser tool: it erases pixels. Mind you, it doesn’t hide them for a while until you want them back, it “destroys” the pixels. The changes that you make by deleting portions of a layer are permanent and can’t exactly be tweaked later.

This is simply a horrible way to work. With every new iteration of Photoshop, Adobe gives us more and more ways to make non-destructive edits, meaning those that don’t truly alter the original pixel data. For instance, Filters used to be a permanent and destructive change, if you blurred a layer, it was stuck that way! Now, with Smart Filters, you can always go back and adjust or even delete the blur.

This same concept gave birth to masks many years ago. With a mask, you not only have the ability to make remarkably detailed decisions about the transparency of a layer or group of layers, even better, you have the freedom to go back and refine or scrap those changes at any time. If I had erased my fire in the example above, it would be gone forever and bringing it back would involve importing the layer all over again. However, because I used a mask, all I have to do is fill that mask with white and immediately all of my fire detail returns.

To use the metaphor of an actual mask, imagine that you want to change your appearance for Halloween. You have two options: the first is to undergo plastic surgery to permanently change your face to look like that of a scary creature and the second is to wear a mask. In this scenario, the eraser tool is plastic surgery. It’s simply a bad choice when you’re not sure that you want the changes to be permanent. Go with the mask instead.

Advanced Masking Techniques

The information above is an absolute beginner’s guide to masks. Odds are, if you’ve been using Photoshop for a while, not a single piece of this was news to you. In fact, you may be thinking that masks are so incredibly simple that they barely merit conversation.

However, masking techniques go from simple to wickedly complex really fast. It’s easy enough to paint some broad strokes to erase large portions of an image, but what if you want to do something more complex? For instance, let’s say we want to take the cat below off of its white background.

Furry animals make particularly difficult masking subjects. All of that fine hair detail means making an accurate selection will be time consuming. The Magic Wand or even the Pen Tool are of no use to us here. So how do the pros start with the image above and create a mask like the one below?

If you’re ready to find out, keep reading as we undertake this feat!

Change the Channel

The good news about the cat image is that there is plenty of contrast to work with. The key to making a good mask is finding contrast and knowing how to pull it out. Here we have a fairly dark cat on a bright white background, which means all we have to do is figure out how to leverage our good fortune and convert the contrast already present into a suitable mask.

The first step in a project like this is to jump over to the Channels Palette and look for the channel with the most contrast. So in our case, we want the channel with the darkest cat and the brightest background, which turns out to be the blue channel.

Make a copy of the blue channel, select it and hit Command-L to bring up a Levels Adjustment. Darken the shadows and the midtones so that there is a crazy amount of contrast like in the image below. Be careful to no go too far with this adjustment. You’ll want to zoom in and watch the hair detail on the fringes of the fur to make sure you’re not clipping too much. It doesn’t have to be perfectly black and white at this point, some dark grays are acceptable.

At this point you encounter one of the trickiest steps of the entire process. The goal is to get as much of the cat as closest to black as you can. This is easy for the face potions and other random spots near the center, just grab a black brush and fill them in. But what about the edge of the hair?

It turns out one of the best ways to handle this task is to use a couple of unlikely candidates: the Dodge and Burn Tools. The reason these work so well is that they can accurately target certain ranges of gray extremely accurately. I set the Dodge Tool to target the highlights and the Burn Tool to target the shadows, grab a medium size soft brush and make my way around the edges of the image, burning shadows and dodging highlights until I like the level of detail that I’m seeing.

This may sound like a time-intensive task, and it can be for some images, but in truth the Dodge and Burn Tools feel like magic when you’re using them and take much of the work out. I was able to come up with a great looking silhouette in only a minute or two.

Once you’re done here, hit Command-Shift-I to inverse the channel so that the cat is white and the background is black like in the image below. Remember that, in masking, white is opaque and black is transparent.

Converting the Channel to a Mask

Now that we have a channel that accurately represents what we want from a mask, how do we convert it? There are a few ways to do this but the easiest is just to Command-click on the channel to load a selection. With a selection loaded, return to your cat layer and click the New Mask button. That’s all there is to it!

Defringing the Mask

As you can see, despite a super detailed mask, we still have some white fringing occurring around the edges. Getting rid of this can literally take hours of tedious work if you don’t know what you’re doing. For starters, we can use the fantastic new Masks Palette in conjunction with Refine Edge to make some live adjustments to our mask.

Utilizing these tools properly takes practice. I won’t cover them closely now because it would take so much time but I encourage you to dig in and play with all of the controls to get a feel for what they do. Often, you can patch up a rough edge in seconds with these sliders, but with our cat project I wasn’t really getting any results that I liked so I cancelled out this operation altogether.

Instead, I went to the Layer menu at the top of the screen and selected Matting>Color Decontaminate. This is an almost hidden command that has the ability to yield some amazing results. As you can see in the image below, it went a long way toward reducing our halo. Note that this command is actually destructive so you should always duplicate your layer before using it.

From here, the last trick I use is to look for problematic areas and actually run the clone brush over the fringes. The mask keeps everything looking nice and cloning replaces unnatural colors with those from the actual fur of the cat in other places. Compare the back and head of the cat in the image below to that above to see the improvement.

Finishing Up

From here it becomes a factor of how much time you want to spend refining your result. With complicated masks like these there is always room for improvement but you’ll find that the point of diminishing returns on your time spent becomes easier and easier to spot as your skill level improves.

The technique we just discussed is just to give you a taste of how advanced masking can become. There are a ton of different types of images to mask and therefore a million different tricks and techniques to figure out along the way which can be mixed and matched on a per-project basis. Practice makes perfect, just be bold and never become intimidated by a masking job that seems too complex. Think through the process one step at a time and find ways to pull out the detail you need.

Conclusion

To sum up, there are two primary types of masks in Photoshop: layer masks and clipping masks. Layer masks use values of gray to assign levels of transparency to specific portions of a layer or group of layers while clipping masks use the transparency of one layer to define that of a different layer or group of layers.

Also, while masking in simple in concept, the actual art takes considerable time, education and practice to master. Leave a comment below and let us know if you learned anything from the information above. Also be sure to share any unique masking techniques or tricks you might have!

Photo Credits: Adrian Durlea, Erik Soderstrom, and Sergiu Bacioiu.

[drawmaticfanatic]

WIP - The Party

This was just a fun project that I wanted to work on because I wanted to do something with multiple detailed characters.

I wanted to show the steps that went into getting to where I am currently, and open myself up for feedback since I haven't done something like this before. I also wanted to show off how many massive mistakes and changes I've made up until this point. Not every drawing starts and ends teh same way, and as I make mistakes, things develop and change, and take on their own structure. The important lesson I've learned is to not be afraid of mistakes, but to keep going, adapt, expect things to change, don't give up, keep adding details where I am comfortable, and let the harder parts work themselves out in time.

So this one starts out with a basic blue sketch to show the figure and shadow of where I wanted the figures. I tried to add yellow as lighting, but ultimatley I converted it to grayscale and the lighting ended up looking like shading as well.

As I went forward I worked on one character at a time rather than trying to work on all the color first, then all the shading, etc. For this, I didn't hace as many layers of shadows, but rather I just used different colors to draw variation into the characters instead of overlaying a bunch of translucent shadow and light layers.

You can see that I experimented with the placement and size of the characters a bit, and thoug at first I expected it to be an outdoor scene, it might end up being a scene in a dungeon, with a dragon. We'll see how it develops!