Value Sketch with Gunzy Tutorial

INTRO:
So, you’re wanting to get the hang of value and contrast? Then you’ve come to (almost) the right place. It’s simple really, once you get the hang of it.
I myself neglected learning how to shade correctly for years in favor of increasing other skills instead. But I soon learned that value really adds depth to an object, and decided to pursue learning this on my own.

In short, after messing around a bit, I learned in near two days, just from experimentation (and being a fast learner). And now I pass on what I’ve learned to willing others. Let’s do this, F**K YEA!!

PART I – The Doodle

The doodle is the best way to start off, you need to have -something- visualized. Some people also do silhouettes to start them off, although all the detail isn’t yet in place, so that makes it hard unless you have a clear vision of everything.

I personally start off with a little sketch/doodle, all details already drawn in and ready to be filled up with value.

I’ll get to something cool later, but for right now, we start with the basics. And that means simple geometric shapes i.e. cubes, cones, spheres etc. I’ve doodled an example of those three.



PART II – Blocking In And Choosing Light Direction/Source

This is the part where I usually choose where the light is coming from. Two of the easiest ones to do are from behind, or from the side, but it’s best to practice with every direction you can.

First I block in with shades of gray, using a hard edged brush. The lighter the gray, the more light is hitting. When something is completely saturated with white, it’ll look mostly just white. This takes practice and some fiddling around.

Do this on a separate layer, and on top of the sketch, the lines are only there to hold the shape of the object. Mess with the opacity so that you can see the lines through the gray, but can also still tell your darks from your lights.

And don’t try to be so perfect in the stage, be as messy as you want, just keep a general idea in your head of where the light is hitting and you’ll be fine.



PART III – Cleaning Up, Giving Prescence

Ok, so now you have a really ugly looking shape with really ugly looking shading, which is overall really ugly looking. Right.
So now it’s time to make it a bit prettier.

Clean up the gray that falls outside the shape by erasing it. It doesn’t have to be too good, just good enough.
Next, make a new layer. This is where edges, midtones, lightest lights, and darkest darks get semi-defined.
Take a medium sized soft brush (low flow and low opacity if you’re using PhotoShop. I’m Using SketchBook Pro 2010) and go over the object lightly with either white or black. Depending on where your light is hitting, and where your shadows are.
Don’t go overboard with it.

I also forgot something *facepalms*. At this point, or even BEFORE this step, I usually lay down a soft gray background to contrast more with the light. So if you haven’t done this, do it on either the same layer, or a new one. If you do it on the same layer you’ll probably get a better result, as you can still go over the edges and define them even more.
I also do a soft shadow and some secret ninja stuff you’ll have to spot and try on your own.



PART IV – Detailing And Not Going Insane

And by this I’m mostly talking to myself…I’m a guy with a taste for detail, what can I say, I go crazy with the possibilities sometimes.
Anyway, for tutorials sake I’ll throw a few scrapes and cuts into the shapes.
I used this to teach myself how to get used to other things on the same object interacting with the same light…it’s complicated to explain, so I’ll draw it instead.

As you can see, by drawing little cracks all over the place, this gives you a chance to experience with how the light interacts and practice more, instead of redrawing the same object over and over and OVER. Although some may prefer to do that, all the same.
I’ve also worked some strange forbidden magic to make the results of mine look a bit better…hint: draw, blend, go over, blend, go over, wash, rinse, repeat.
Basically what I just said is in order to make the cracks blend in with the object instead of sticking out, I went over the area with a gray of the surrounding shade, and went over some areas once again, to keep it both blended, yet sharp. Get it?

Of course you don’t, this takes time.

I create a new layer, this will most likely be the final layer, but sometimes I add some extras.
Right now, I work with a very small brush, if you’re not using a graphics tablet and don’t have pressure sensitivity on, well…this will be tough. You can skip this though.



PART V – And From Here

You’ll know when you’re finished. As an artist I’m sure you’ll keep going back and forth messing with stuff until it looks just right, and if you don’t do that…maybe you should.
Also, with the full grayscale drawing done, you don’t have to worry about too much when it comes to coloring. A nice combination of overlay, multiply or color layers should do the job. Experiment.

At this time, you can choose to either keep or delete your sketch layer. Why? Because amazingly, nearly no lines were used, WOOT! Because that increases the realism, although for style, I sometimes outline my stuff with a bright white outline.
It’s whatever you want.

And here’s that something cool I promised…cba, didn’t finish, whatever.



Protip I learned from Cype and Rei: Go from dark to light, not light to dark. Unless you’re that awesome.

Article source : www.mangatutorials.com/2011/value-sketch-with-gunzy-tutorial

Sann’s Oekaki Tutorial Using Shi-Painter

First of all, I’m not a professional artist or super-awesome-l33t at Oekaki. (In fact, I haven’t done any oekaki until lately again) I simply made this tutorial to help anyone who may find it helpful, and hopefully it will give those who have never tried oekaki before an idea of what to do in oekaki.

Second of all, this tutorial only shows how I usually draw oekakis, but there are thousands of different ways to do them. There are also millions of extremely professional oekaki tutorials that I would suggest everyone to look them up.

Third of all, I was going to list all the functions and stuffs but… I got lazy. So feel welcome to post any question you may have and I’ll try my best to answer them all at the forum.
I don’t know why my oekaki is in Mandarin Chinese, or is it suppose to be like that? So sorry if the translation is wayyy off and just bear with me:


(Click on image for a larger view)

The rest is pretty straight forward, so let’s move on to the drawing part!

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STEP 1 – LEARN HOW TO LAYER!: 

Here is a picture of how I usually use layers:



Layer is a great way to draw/color different things. It will make sure that you don’t overlap your drawings/colors and make your life ALOT easier. Bascially always have a layer for your line art (which is usually on top of your colors) and just create different layers for different colors you’d put on the drawing. You can open the little layer window by left clicking on where ‘Layer 0′ is. You can ‘hide’ the layer by right-clicking on the same spot. You can also change the opacity of the layer by using the slide bar (which default is 100%).

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STEP 2 – DO THE LINEART FIRST! : 



Before you color, you should always finish your line art first. (Make sure you only use one layer to do your line art! Unless you are trying something really complex) There are also different ways to do line art, in this picture I simply just did everything with pencil. Though you can always use the pen tool to get a more smoothing, soft touch to your lineart.

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STEP 3 – ON TO THE COLORING! : 



Once you’ve done your lineart, it’s time to color! (Yay!) Always start out with the lightest color (except highlights), then shading it into darker color(s). Here I used a cel-type ish of coloring style. You may adjust different types of color by sliding the R-G-B slider, don’t just use the default color template!

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STEP 4 – MORE COLORING! (Don’t be afraid to redo!) : 



I didn’t like how the coloring was turning out, so I tried a different coloring style by erasing the old colors and making everything soft with the water color tool.

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STEP 5 – MORE MORE COLORING — AND SHADING! : 



After the skin I moved on to the hair! Here I used a darker color for shading and make it look like manga style-ish. Remember to use more than one color when shading if you wanted more details. Don’t forget to use the ‘Darken’ function to shade too if you don’t know what color to use for shading.

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STEP 6 – TIME FOR SOME HIGHLIGHTS! : 



Don’t forget the highlights after shading! Here I simply used a lighter color to make the highlights stand out.

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STEP 7 – CLEAN UP UNWANTED COLORS! : 



Simply erase the colors that went outside of your lineart with an eraser tool, just be careful and don’t accidently clear everything.

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STEP 8 – MORE HIGHLIGHTS! : 



I just added more highlights with the pen tool, you can also use ‘Lighten’ + ‘Darken’ function to tweak your drawing. You can see that I have the skin on a different layer and what it’d look like without the lineart.

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STEP 9 – BACKGROUND TIME! :
 


Once you’ve done everything, it’s time to move onto the background!

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STEP 10 – FINISHING UP: 



Here I’ve used the ‘RE-MASK’ tool so that I could change the color of my lineart. I also added little curls and stuffs for the hair.

TADA~ and now you have your final product!

RANDOM TIPS THAT ARE REALLY USEFUL (to me at least): 

- Right click on your mouse is your friend. When you right click on a color it will work as an ‘eyedropper’ tool, meaning it will find and set the color to the color that you right clicked on. You can also draw anything while holding down your left mouse button, then right click to do a quick undo.

- Use ‘UNDO’ as much as you want. If you don’t like something you just did? Simply undo it. Don’t ever worry if you have to redo the whole thing.

- Play with opacity! See the grey slidebar that says ‘A255′? Play around with it, you can slowly gradiant your color with it if you master it!

- Play with R-G-B slider! You can often get some really neat colors!

- Practice, practice, practice! Though oekaki can sometimes takes hours to do, but practice makes it perfect! I look back at some of the oekakis I did years ago, and boy, it’s …….. horrible. >_> But now I look at my current oekakis I actually feel satisfied with some of them!

- For the love of god, and your precious wrist/hand, get a tablet.
Though it’s not ‘unpossible’ to draw oekaki with mouse (in fact, there are alot really, really talented artists who can draw professional looking oekakis by mouse), but having a tablet would help ALOT. (But don’t expect your art will look all professional in a day if you dont practice, even if you have a tablet. )

For fun purposes here are some of the oekakis I did throughout year 2002 til now (with/without tablet):



(with a mouse)



(with a mouse)



(with a mouse)



(with a tablet!)



(yayy tablet~)

The rest are all with a tablet










Anyway, I hope some of you guys find this helpful, and THANK YOU for reading!

Article source : www.mangatutorials.com/2010/sanns-oekaki-tutorial-with-shi-painter

Hair Coloring Tutorial

Hi guys! Out of the complete and utter kindness of my heart *ahem* … (and boredom) I have decided to make a hair colouring tutorial! So yeah, I hope some of you people out there in the interwebz world somehow learn something from this tutorial! The two things you pretty much need is Photoshop and basic knowledge of light source. A tablet would help but it’s not needed. Since this is a little text heavy, you may think that it’s complicated.

Believe me, it’s really simple! I just tend to write a lot – hahaha. Plus it covers some techniques on using some tools here too. : )

So anyways, here you go!

NOTE: Words in bold correspond to the red-lines in the image examples above the text



Okay, so we are gonna start with this. The skin, face, etc. is already done and the overlap of the skin colour because it wouldn’t affect the hair. : )


First and foremost, make a new LAYER. This is so that you prevent yourself froom going over some other parts of your drawing that you’ve already finished. Pretty basic rule.

For this tutorial, you can use as much layers as you want, but as for personal preference, I only use one.

Also, make sure that the hair colour layer is above the sking color layer.



Now on to acctual colouring. First apply the base colour. It could be cleaener than this. (I’m just a messy colourist >_> )




Then divide the hair into partitions using a much darker colour. Make sure that the brush opacity is around 25-35%. This is so that the lines used aren’t too uniform in shade. Also make sure that the lines agree with the flow of the hair. Don’t use random just use random lines.

Make sure that you shade the darkest parts of the hair like so.



Now change the opacity into a smaller number. Then start putting in small strands of hair. Again, make sure the lines agree with the flow of the hair and the partition. They should be approximately 1/3 of the length of the partition, but make sure you vary the lengths. Start the strands from the tips of the partition.



And now we use the trusty smudge tool~! Make sure that it’s strength is around 60-75%, then smudge the strands of the hair. Make sure you smudge it according to the flow of the hair like so. Also, make sure you don’t go over the borders of the partition. If you find this hard, you could always do it on a different layer.



After smudging, put more strands in. (Brush Opacity 25-35%) But make it cleaner and longer. It should be around 3/4 to full length strands. Try to vary and experiment on how much strands you want to put in. Just to make sure it doesn’t look like a bunch of dried noodles.



After putting in the strands, choose another much darker colour and then go over the main lines of the hair partition. Just to make them look defined. Also, vary the brush opacity based on how dark your colour is. I used 30-35%.

I’m showing you the colours that I used just to show how dark they should be.


And now we’ll be using the burn tool! Okay, so if you’ve been using different layers, I suggest you merge all the hair colouring layers to make this easier.

All you got to do is burn the parts where you think the shadows should go. Take into consideration the lightsource of your drawing. You might want to change the exposure of the tool so that it’s easier to control how dark you want it to be.

This is to create more depth and volume to the hair.








And now, we’re moving on to highlights! Okay, so choose a lighter colour for the hair. Then apply it to the areas you think they should go. Make sure that the brush opacity is around 20-35%. Again, take the drawing’s light source into consideration. After that, go over it again with a lighter colour.

Also, the brush strokes should be curved and agrees with the flow of the hair sort of like this:






Once you’ve applied the highlights, we’re gonna use the dodge tool! Make sure that the settings is on highlight, NOT midtones (though that works too, highlights is just better). The exposure has to be pretty low or the parts that you highlight would look too bright and overly saturated.

So yeah, use the dodge tool over the highlights that you’ve done and some parts around it, and wherever you think it should be lighter. But again, take your light source into consideration.

Then add a few touch ups using the burn tool if you think that it still lacks depth and volume.


And then for my case (since I’m a messy colourist), I clean it up and viola! IT’S DONE!!!

Of course, we could always put extras like mini dots at the risk of making it look shinier or look like the person has dandruff – ha ha!

Here are a few other examples. : )


I hope you guys learned something! And sorry for the lengthy text! Thanks for being patient. XD

Article source : www.mangatutorials.com/2010/hair-coloring-tutorial

Deranged Laine’s Fold Tutorial

How to: Folds !

Hi hi ~! I will try my best to do a tutorial on Folds here! Please forgive Laine if I commit any mistakes! I’ve never had any formal art lessons so… ^^;;; Please click on the thumbnails too!! m(_)m
Here’s a list of the steps~

Step: Descriptions
One: What are Folds?
Two: Where to draw Folds?
Three: Types of Folds
Four: Shading/Coloring Folds! Pt 1
Five: Shading/Coloring Folds! Pt 2
Six: Common Mistakes When Drawing Folds
Seven: Common Items of Folds
Eight: Common Folds for Women

STEP 1: What are Folds?

Here we have a normal piece of cloth laid out smooth…



What happens if you grab it?



Folds and creases, well, appear. You’re prolly going “like DUHHH i KNOW that you dummy”. Well yes, it’s an easy concept, but like many things, our brain seems to forget this when we are actually drawing, and we go blank as to where to actually put folds!


As you can see, the folds in both the examples above don’t make sense because they’re drawn without keeping in mind that folds happen at certain places. Here, the folds look like they were placed haphazardly in an attempt to draw folds, but failed because of a lack of understanding of where to draw folds.

STEP 2: Where to Draw Folds?

Folds happen at the following places mainly:
• At Joints
• At places it is being pulled
• At places it is being pushed

In short, folds happen at places Where there is external pressure applied to disrupt the smoothness of the fold.

Er… okay , that wasn’t worded very well… How about looking at some examples?









…and back to the first example, where it is being pulled:



…and where it is attached to something, but gravity if pulling, like in this cape:

STEP 3: Types of Folds?

Well okay now that you have an idea of where to draw folds , you’ll need to know what exactly makes a fold look like……a fold…..

First ye got the typical straight-ish folds that go in one direction…



Note that the widths of the folds are VARIED. This is very important because beginners tend to draw their folds in uniform widths, like this:


Of course, there are exceptions to this but…usually in nature, there is no uniformity and no straight lines . Only man made stuff is straight usually…

Then you get a fold that is caused when two creases bunch together, making it look like a “hole “…




Another type of fold happens when you have more than one point of force acting upon the cloth:


An important note however is that when drawing these kinds of folds, the folds NEVER CROSS.

What I mean:

STEP 4: Shading/Coloring Folds – Part I

So now you know how and where to draw folds, now for coloring!! I used Painter and a tablet for this, but the basic procedure for shading and coloring folds is pretty much the same.

First, this is the line art for the fold:


I like to start off with base coloring first… so lay down the base color!

Then, I like to start off by shading the shadows first… keep a light source in mind!!



Notice that the shadowy parts fall on the opposite sites of the light source? Also, you seldom/never get two same-tone shadows lying side by side.

STEP 5: Shading/Coloring Folds – Part II

Next, I like to start laying down the lighter tones!



Note, the lighter colored areas are colored on the same side as the light source. Note there is also a base color area between the light and shadow area…

So now you have base – shadow – light…. you can finish off here really, but i like to touch up on the folds more to give them more er…outstanding look? (ie. Tone variation!) In this step, I add darker shadows, and lighter lights , the tone variation makes the picture have more “depth “and more interesting, not so bland and flat!



Lastly, you can choose to erase the lines! When you color/shade folds, the lines you drew in the outline are usually erased off, coz they…look better that way…well use your own judgment! Sometimes the lines look okay/better if left there, and sometimes they look better erased!

It’s not very obvious here, so i used this Meis cg of mine….see the outline on the left and then compare it to the finished CG . I erased off the lines ne? If you look around pro work, you’ll notice that folds usually have minimal outlines when they are colored too!

STEP 6: Common Mistakes!

Now let’s review some of the common mistakes done by beginners that I see… some were mentioned in previous sections but some are new!

When drawing outlines for folds, don’t use furry lines! Sketchiness is cool and all, but there is something to the sketchy style…and in examples like below…..it just looks bad and uncertain, like you’re not confident with the pencil instead of showing a style of yours:



And remember, fold lines don’t criss-cross like these. Observe folds in real life and you’ll notice this too!


Remember to have variation in folds! Folds are ..alive…they’re different in lots of cases, and I believe the best way to learn folds is to look at real folds and then practice hard!!!! This tutorial can only help you so much, the rest is up to you!



And don’t place folds where they don’t belong, they don’t just happen everywhere ya know? Gotta have a good knowledge of folds to place them properly! [ er..that don't make much sense but...]

STEP 7: Stylized and Common Folds!

Okay, some of the more common types of folds that you will find in clothing are as below.

First we got the humble tee-shirt, unlike common belief, the tee has folds too! [ Hikaru no Go has good examples of these] …



Then you got the coat kind of folds… coats have folds too! Unless they’re made of really thick materials… and even those have tiny folds and creases at corners so that they look interesting.



If the pants are baggy, the folds collect at the heels… if they’re jean-ish type of pants, the folds would happen as follow.

STEP 8: Common Folds for Women!

Now that we’re done with the guy’s clothing, let’s move on to common types of folds in female clothing …

Here we have the dress-ish type of folds that are tight fitting. Since tight fitting clothes are…tight…they tend to have not many folds [ duh ]



Sometimes when the top shirt is tight …



…and sometimes you get those neck wrap-around as shown…



Finished~!

Article source : www.mangatutorials.com/2010/deranged-laines-fold-tutorial