u/LavaTwocan

Third day (well actually it’s been like a week because I’ve been busy, and I tried applying all the advice y’all gave. Lots of contrast, strong shapes. Edge control? Maaaaybbeee? I tried putting some darker bits on the edges, but that’s probably not what I’m supposed to do. Anyway, instead of drawing more humans I decided to draw a badass Dragon. That way I don’t have to focus on anatomy and can just work on values and color choices. Decided to do an Eastern Dragon because the body is ultimately a long tube, easier to apply color and figure out the shape.

I color with gradient maps now as it’s the easiest way to add colors to value painting without taking much time. Prior to this I wasn’t really sure how they worked, but after fucking around with them for a bit I realized it’s just dark to light. So I went with the age old hue-shift into darker and lighter colors, the tried and true method.

Still looks very janky but I’m vastly more pleased with how this turned out compared to my previous “attempts”.

So I figured out something: the Gradient Map. This tool is actually insane. I can’t believe nobody informed me of its existence and I had to manually go looking for alternative ways to turn from grayscale to color. It feels a little bit cheaty I’m not gonna lie. At least it’s way better than trying to use bl*nding m*des. I’m still not good at using Gradient map tho. I tried to do my lineart coloring technique of taking a color, hue shifting to a darker and lighter one, and then using those as the 3… nodes? Not sure what they’re called. Doesn’t look very good. Way better than my previous attempt. I’m still trying to achieve my dream style… best way I can describe it as is “Arcane-like faux 3d render”

One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

So I normally do a stylized, kind of comic book type style, with black outlines to break up the shapes. I decided that I wanted to learn lineless (because it’s my goal artstyle) and might as well try realism because it helps identify where to put certain values. And you know what they say, you gotta learn realism to improve your stylization. I can’t say I did the best, but I certainly tried. I actually love value painting though. Much more efficient than doing all the shapes and colors and whatnot manually, which is ideal if I’m gonna make a webcomic. But my biggest weakness is actually adding color to the value painting, as I used to have a method for coloring (place color on normal layer, hue shift for darker and lighter colors, that made coloring more precise than “use color blending mode and hope for the best”).

So. Value painting. I want to make a webcomic, I gotta learn how to do values and backgrounds and all that. Problem is that I do want to make a webcomic in color (obviously with simpler backgrounds than this) and I don’t know how to approach the actual coloring step. I feel like I understand value better now, but every tutorial has always been confusing for me once they get to the coloring step after putting in all the values. I’ve tried going over it in a flat brush but it just looks… bad? when colored.

Is it cuz’ I’m using too many shapes? I don’t really understand the technique for rendering. Any helpful guides out there that would let me understand rendering better?