My Colouring Trick, aka: (Patreon)

I've had a fair few people remark to me lately that they don't know what's changed, but my art and colouring is looking crisper than ever. And I'm really enjoying my style, too! 

The key element that has changed is that I've switched my primary shading tool. I used to use just a hard round brush or lasso to block in my shadows and light and it was effective enough! It made for very anime-esque shots with sharp edges and a crunchy feel. I was very inspired by watching a lot of Studio Mir (Korra, Voltron, Nightmare of the Wolf) productions and Castlevania (Powerhouse Animation Studios). 

I can't remember why, but earlier this year I started to use the tapered airbrush in CSP's base collection of airbrushes. It's in CSP, Photoshop, you can edit a normal soft brush to taper with pressure sensitivity. 

I even use it for laying down "flats" now. Colour without shading. I keep the pressure sensitivity while high, so I never quite know how a stroke will turn out.

The real fun comes when adding light and shadow! The smaller it is, the crisper it looks. The bigger it is, the softer it looks. If I feel the colour has gone on too opaquely, I get a very big soft round brush to erase it into a gradient.

But it doesn't stop there. When I'm satisfied with the tapered brush colour, good old Hard Round isn't out of the game just yet. I use the hard brush to "carve"/erase into what I layed down. This variation of soft and hard edges really helps push my shading and forms.

As goes light, so goes darkness! I do the same thing with shadows. Tapered airbrush followed by hard round eraser. Delicious.

It's really helped me to go back and brush up (heh) on my basics, made me observe volume and light much more, too. I'm having a really good time with this tool and I hope you do too if you try it out!

Find my brush set (which includes the tapered airbrush) attached to this post!

If you want a little suggestion on how to think about light and shading, I have a  >small guide here<