ART TUTORIAL - From Sketch to Final Quick Guide (Patreon)

Hello everyone!

The long awaited tutorial is finally here! This guide covers sketch, line art, colouring, shading & final touch ups & effects, I've also included a shot of my specs & brushes!

Everything I have learnt has also been through online tutorial or just simply practice and I hope this guide helps aid your own process & style along the way!

I do not use any special settings beside this brush setup. The airbrush gives the lineart a soft look but set to a very dense level makes nice smooth lines!

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STEP ONE

For this tutorial I have chosen an icon piece as an example. Most of my work follows the exact same process. First I start with a canvas at least 1000x1000, this is a good size for icons, but I suggest this as a minimum size.

Sketch your drawing out however rough / clean you need it to be for line art. I also like to use a coloured tool as black and white can be unclear if you like to do layers of line art. After completing your sketch, reduce the layer's opacity by 10-20% so its just barely visible but enough to work with. I have chosen 15% for the example!

Also play around with any transformation tools to adjust composition, size etc!

STEP 2

Once your line art is complete you can then begin the base colours on a seperate layer. Also I like to change my line art from black to coloured (Usually a darker tone of whichever the prodominant colour of the piece is) then set it to multiply.

STEP 3

My style of shading is a little weird but I like to bucket fill the whole layer on a new clipping mask, then erase where lighter areas would be, leaving the remaining shadow. After I erase the bulk areas I will then do a 10px brush erasure on some of the edges giving an almost back light appearance.

Once all the shading is complete in the first colour chosen, I will then use the select tool to adjust the hue of certain areas. For example, I will grab the shading on the lighter areas of the fur and make the hue/light brighter. It makes shadows look a bit more natural as shadows are not entirely 1 shade/colour.

Also, shown more on the next step, but lower the opacity of the shading layer to change the shadow darkness. Lighter shadows give off a brighter ambiance!  Eye highlights are also added in this step or the next! 

STEP 4

After Shading I then add some highlights! I make a new clipping mask layer, set it to luminosity/screen then add small strokes where light would shimmer off. This layer is then reduced down to 10-30% depending on the colour underneath. Adding highlights onto white is near impossible so I also suggest ever so slightly darkening any white base layers to allow some form of high-light over the top.

I also like to add an additional lumin/screen layer for back lighting. Back lighting is usually done in a blueish hue but can be any colour depending on the piece ambience. This layer is added to the edge of a large shadow area, giving those areas more depth. You can see them mostly around the back of the head side etc.

STEP 5

This is the stage where I then add my effects, final adjustments and so on in photoshop! My main reason for using PS is that SAI is limited to certain features such as pattern overlays, layer effects and brush importation.

The first steps I take is to play around with the brightness/saturation, giving my work a lighter glow. I also then use the gradient tool to create nice colour fusions for the background, and pattern overlays to add more effects on the BG layer.

A stroke is added around the character to visually seperate them from the BG.

STEP 6

The last step I take with the effects is adding a coloured screen layer over the top of the whole piece. I usually choose a blue or purple, set the layer mode to lighten / screen (Overlay, etc, whatever looks good) and reduce the opacity to about 20 - 50%.

This will change the hue of most of the shadow areas making it less dull and also giving the piece a faded effect. I find that doing this also blends the BG & main focal piece (The character) together.

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I hope this tutorial is helpful! I will be making more tutorials in the future discussing other effects and processes I use! If you have any questions at all please leave a comment below!~