"Treetop Chat" Process (Patreon)

This one is pretty simple (and from 2019!), but since I made a wallpaper version recently, I thought it'd be nice to talk about it! (note: this is the original version - to see how I created the texture of the wallpaper version, I go over that in my vintage newsprint effect guide!)

If you have other questions along the way (about brushes, my coloring methods, etc), you might be able to find answers by clicking through the drawing guide masterpost. If you still aren't sure about something, though, feel free to leave a comment at the end!

So to start:

1) The rough sketch, which was done in Paint Tool Sai. This illustration is a little older, so it's from before I started using the airbrush to sketch. At this point, the composition was a little more open - there's much more space to the left of the figures.

2) A slightly cleaner sketch! I added more trees and roots and enclosed them a little more. I wanted it to have an almost "secret hideout" feeling - like a place that no one else knows about. I also felt like the long, curving lines of the trees helped pull your attention directly toward the figures, whereas the previous sketch left your eyes feeling a little lost.

3) The lineart. Not much really changed here! Since I tend to color things without much texture (especially back when I drew this), I tried to create the majority of the texture through the lines - so lots of little hatch marks and scribbles appear on the trees.

4) At this point I switch to Clip Studio for easy flatting. Color-wise, I knew that I wanted this to have a nice minimalistic pallette. This was my first try, and while I liked it, I felt like it was too heavy and Halloween-ish.

5) I tried incorporating some green and making Gon less pumpkin orange, which helped in some ways, but ultimately I felt like incorporating the green just made the whole thing muddier. Something about the way the green was interacting with the bright yellow, dark grey, and brown made it feel less like forest greenery and more like a color you'd expect to see in a sewer.

6) The color scheme I had initially been fighting for being too "boring" but that wound up being the best fit - lots of green. The trees don't pop the way they did in the first one, and making them green is definitely the less adventurous choice, but it does feel more natural / less distracting. I also swapped out the dark background for a bright one, which, cons: the images loses a bit of that enclosed, secret feeling, but pros: the whole thing feels brighter and cheerier, like a moment bathed in light.

Maybe most important thing is that Gon and Killua are no longer competing for attention here. In the other two color schemes, it's hard to immediately discern the focal point - the darker colors on Gon and Killua are dampened by the dark colors in the background, and in the first one especially, the bright whites of Killua almost melt into the pale yellow of the tree. In this one the darkest darks and brightest brights appear distinctly on the figures, making them immediately read as the focal point.

7) Some basic rendering - as usual, I very roughly throw down two slightly brighter tones using the G pen for a subtle sense of dimension on the trees and moss. You can ese this a little more clearly in the 100% zoom images at the end of the gallery!

8) After that, I just lock the lineart layer's opacity and color some lines! I pretty exclusively focus on the figures here and leave the background as-is, which helps push them as a focal point. I really liked the way the red interacted with the white and yellow - it adds a little more to the feeling of the image being full of light, with that light originating from Gon and Killua.

Here are the colors I used. I think the brown was only used on the eyes, and the brightest red was only used on the blush marks - everything else was either black or dark red.

9-12) A better look at the colored lines, plus some closeups at 100% zoom.

And that's it! Sorry if this one wasn't terribly exciting - I hope it was still interesting to see!