#when in doubt add a gradient overlay to the lineart.

[tainebot01]

Was messing around with facial features / proportions and accidentally ended up with my new favourite drawing of The Investigations Kids.

[Image Description: a digital illustration of Eustace née Sebastian (upper left) and Kay (lower right) from Ace Attorney, with a colour gradient from blue to magenta. Both are shown from the shoulders up and looking off in the distance. End Description]

[didsomeonesayventus]

So how the fresh hell do you color

a tutorial by moi

so how do we make these flat colors look great? Note that I start with “absolute” colors, what the colors would be not accounting for any lighting whatsoever

the first thing we do is add shading using the Multiply blendmode, and most of the time this clips to your coloring layer. Unclip it to add depth and blend the subject better with the background.

be sure to use one coherent color as much as possible to keep a unified color palette, which is why I’m often using purple for the job since the color can easily be adjusted to gel easily with warm and cool colors compared to, say, green or red. But if needed, it’s okay to use like 1 or 2 other colors if the main color is looking barf on certain parts. Also remember that White is invisible when using multiply (and Black is downright opaque), so if you want to blend stuff out it can be useful.

next step is adding your highlight layers using Add blendmode, and this one is free to go out of bounds since giving the glow more room makes it look glowier (black bg added to make add layer clearer)

Add is the opposite of multiply, so use Black to blend out (White is downright opaque), and when it comes to selecting color, think about what color your lighting is aiming for (like use gold tones in a warm piece). When in doubt go with the color in the flats.

color your lineart and set it to multiply, the brighter the hue, the less impact the lineart has.

add a layer that uses Soft Light or Overlay to unify your color scheme.

you could use a gradient to reinforce your lighting direction. If you have a background that is basically lighting/gradient you can go ahead and duplicate it and use it as the Soft Light/Overlay layer for coherence, but you might want to edit it.

and that’s basically what I do! Super lazy, but effective.