#ssz……tutorials ?????

[superstarzolar]

hey, fritz! I love your art and was wondering how you shaded your art because the lighting and colors are really nice, I also use Procreate and do an overlay with dark purples for shadows, and was wondering how to shade somewhat like you do!

(keep up the incredible work, the fandom page is so cool)

this is a somewhat lengthy tutorial cuz my shading is a multi-step process so……. under the cut it is!!!

i use [what i like to call] grayscale shading, where you block out the shadows/highlights in grayscale. i use this to better differentiate the values in the lighting and get better contrasts [and all that other technical artist mumbo jumbo]

[i’ll also be using a pisspoor sketch of my fnac puppeteer design for this so…… ya]

[colors are also shown on the side as they become relevant]

[THIS IS ALSO VERY UGLY BCUZ ITS A SKETCH AND THE INITIAL DRAWING IS NOT USINF MY USUAL WARM COLORS… but the tutorial still applies]

obviously step number 0 is ur base colors . nothing too outrageous here .

1st , i put a gray overtop the base colors [not on the same layer(s), obviously]. this color acts as the base value in the steps to come, and i usually use a gray in between pure black and pure white.

2nd, i go overtop that other gray layer with another, more darker gray. this one is the closest to pure black out of any other value in the shading .

[these nexts steps assume that you know what angle your lighting is coming from]

3rd, i erase all parts from the dark gray layer that are in the light. [i know jack shit abt lighting and so i just eyeball it and pray, but using references also works].

4th, i take a gray in between the initial midtone-gray and our darkest gray and rim the edges of some of the erased bits and/or scribble in blocks of color on parts that are close to, but not directly in, the light.

5th, i get a gray tone lighter than the initial base color and use it to highlight the parts of the drawing that are nearest to the light source.

6th, i take another gray tone, one that’s now in between our darkest gray and the one we picked in step 4, and scribble it around the edges of areas completely in shadow. this is supposed to be some sort of reflective light, but honestly idfk what im doing.

[these next steps use the gradient map feature on procreate, but im sure manually picking colors is fine too]

7th, i use the gradient map feature on procreate to automatically assign colors to the previously gray values. for this example im using the present Mocha gradient, but any other gradient will do

8th, after settling on a gradient that matches the mood/color scheme/setting of the image, i set the layer to multiply and fuck around with the opacity until im satisfied with how it looks.

additionally, you can add an overlay layer and airbrush the lightest areas with a similarly light color/the darkest areas with a similarly dark color.

aaaaaaaand that’s it for a shading tutorial. being so fr i don’t like how some of my shading looks sometimes and im working to improve it but this is how i do it currently !!!!!