#god sometimes i just wanna pluck all my painter friends and have them colour my lineart because LIGHTING CAN CHANGE A DRAWING SO MUCH!!

[fisheito]

Hi! Um, any tips on how to color/shade?

-Because i am beyond terrible at it

m..me?? cooouring? i mean. i hate colouring so much that i flat-col the minimum for character recognition and call it done

if i absolutely HAvE to shade something . i'll use the :shrug: shortcut of starting with the base colour, then tweaking the Saturation/Lightness bars: -shadow: lower saturation and lightness -light: whatever saturation, higher lightness

if the character is somewhere with a distinct colour theme, i'll try to shift the base/shadows/lights to that colour.

likewise if there's a distinct coloured light source, i'll make the light on the char similar to that source

imagine me sitting on one section of the colour wheel. and walking toward the destination colour. just picking up colours in between. idk how legit it is, but i'm doing it

sometimes i'll be all srs and try detailed light/shadows but. it ends up makin my drawing too busy. a mess.

CORRECT: try to replicate that light source IRL or thru reference so u can figure out why it looks wrong, then correct your placements

INCORRECT, BECAUSE I'M LAZY: do a simple shape-based cel shade and let the audience's brain finish the job 😂

also i try not to use pure black or pure white for shading. i used to paint the night sky as 100% (zero lightness) black and the moon as 100% (ALL LIGHTNESS) white and my instructor wanted to fling me out a window. i could see it in their eyes. as they gently explained how IRL conditions are rarely 100% black or 100% white. maybe the night sky, depending on the conditions,, (if u actually colour drop a photo) is like 9% lightness with a tinge of blue. the moon is 96% lightness tinged orange. idk