#pleaee please please push your colors too unless youre going for realism its actual hell trying to learn how to do it after condemning

[battleslippers]

do u know how to render...

lol i mean ik u do but can u teach me?????? (only if u want :3)

HERE WE GO. I am by NO means an expert/professional, so my process isn’t perfect nor is it the most efficient (😭), but here’s my process + some time lapses.

added a border because this post is so damn long

1. sketch — I try to make sure it’s accurate if there is a ref, and the proportions are right in this because the sketch determines how good the rest of the piece is and how much tweaking you’ll have to do in the future. Think of it like the foundation: if it’s wonky, everything else will be wonky and it’ll be a HUGE pain to fix later (speaking from experience). The purly painting is probably a great example of what NOT to do in this case! That thing took so much time because I didn’t have a good enough sketch and I didn’t really have my colors down, so I did a bunch of tweaking, which you’ll probably see in the time lapse.

2. Base colors/undertones/blocking in: this 100% differs depending on ur style, preference, and goal of the painting. If I’m doing a photo study for value or color, I’ll simplify it down as much as possible (basic colors or 3 values). Undertones are there if you’re REALLY working a traditional method I think.

I think this is one of my best examples of this type of painting. This is purely copying a photo to the most accurate, and if I had to do anything differently, I’d block in the shapes and shadows THEN go into all those details (I feel this would be more efficient but, again, preference lol).

3. Shadows — this really goes hand in hand with the previous step, but I like to establish these with usually a cooler tone depending on the environment and lighting. If your piece is outside on a clear day, the shadows on a lot of things will be blue due to the light from the sky. If you look at enough pictures and pretty much anywhere around you, you’ll see how light and shadow interacts with colors of the environment, which is really cool!!!

4. Messing with it — with those undertones and shadows, I might add in extra colors like redness or blue for things like skin to get that layered feel (especially considering how skin isn’t totally uniform due to its mild transparency). Then I’ll color pick those in between tones and block in stuff and do it until it feels right. The Angela painting is probably my best example of this, which I’ll reblog with (plus two other ones) For Curly’s jacket, I used a few different brushes to get that texture and the whole process was basically scribbling until it looked right. Hatching is one of my favorite methods to get a little texture in, so I do that a lot too.

5. Finally touches/technical settings — once everything is totally done, I’ll usually mess around with the Hue, Saturation, and Brightness along with Color Balance and Curves on the overall painting until I’m happy with it. Then I’ll probably turn up the Sharpness a little and maybe add some chromatic aberration.

Overall, I usually do these steps going from background (if there is one) -> skin -> clothing -> hair, but I hop around a lot. I usually establish the flats overall then render each individual one.

Also, lighting does NOT have to be warm and shadows do NOT have to be cool; it all depends on the context. As long as your values are right, your colors will probably look good. Of course, it’s still worth knowing how to make them harmonious or contrast and allat, but values are the main foundation. Online resources are also awesome (my favorites being Proko, Marco Bucci, and Sinix among many others) and just observing things around you and others’ art is an incredibly powerful tool. I usually like to check my values by making my painting black and white by coloring in a luminosity layer with white. This method isn’t universal due to different programs, but if there’s a setting to turn ur drawing black and white, I def recommend it.

A side note: my rendering style is basically just painting 😭 At most I have like 5 layers max (sketch, flats, background, subject, hair or anything else I’m afraid to fuck up) but I end up combining flats and sketch most of the time and just paint over it. Most of the time, I have 2-3 layers and combine them all by the end. For the (currently) black and white Johnny one I’ll reblog with is just one layer, but I’ll probably make layers to overlay color and another to add variation/detail. My process isn’t very uniform or clean 💀

I am SO sorry this turned out to be such a long post good god

EDIT: I realized the paragraph I thought was deleted actually just moved so I erased it lmao