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Description
Thanks for reading, guys!

You can watch the animated playback of this painting from the oekaki board: [link]

And, I just wanted to leave a note on the tool I used, pencil tool: It's an incredibly simple tool, it does no blending on its own and that's actually why I like it. The pencil tool has a hard/pixelated edge, but it's a very... transparent tool? and I find I enjoy having the control I do over its opacity, it makes layering on the colors and blending them very intuitive for me. Your tool preference will vary, but good luck with whatever you use! I've sadly never found an equivalent to this tool in PaintTool SAI, but the Pencil tool in Photoshop is practically the same, just with slight opacity differences.

Final notes: I guess if there's anything to take away from this tutorial, it's:

1) Keep your sketches loose. A lot of artists struggle when they start to paint because they keep trying to get it to match their clean, polished lines, when really, painting is really more about "carving" form out of colors and rough sketches. When coloring lineart too often we let the lines define the form, and then we don't know what to do with the color! In painting, let the colors define the form!

2) Explore the color box, and experiment. Don't move linearly--explore what combinations of saturation and desaturation give you! Color-pick across pieces you like, see how they worked with their colors. Don't be afraid of dancing around colors (though it's usually easier to do with desaturated tones)!

3) Don't overwork it! Overworking something--such as the too-refined sketch, and the too-much-shading on the ear, are really easy to spot though we often don't realize what we're looking at at first--we just know that it feels off, that it feels like the artist struggled in that area. The simpler you can keep something, the better and more natural it will look, usually. If you're fighting something, stop, step back, and try to figure out why. Try to do the minimum work necessary for something to feel "right", and then leave it alone! That's a skill to develop, learning to ease back! (As someone who's OCD about details, I can testify.)

4) NEVER GIVE UP. I included lots of embarrassingly old oekakis I did to show you guys, it takes more than one try to pick this stuff up, so don't get discouraged! Keep trying, and keep experimenting as you go! Even now, every time I try to do something a little different in how I pick my skin tones, and it's helped me a lot in getting to where I am today.

Good luck, and please let me know if there's anything I can do to help, or any tips/crits you'd like to offer.
Keep painting!

[PART ONE: THE BASICS]

Description
Thanks for reading, guys!

You can watch the animated playback of this painting from the oekaki board: [link]

And, I just wanted to leave a note on the tool I used, pencil tool: It's an incredibly simple tool, it does no blending on its own and that's actually why I like it. The pencil tool has a hard/pixelated edge, but it's a very... transparent tool? and I find I enjoy having the control I do over its opacity, it makes layering on the colors and blending them very intuitive for me. Your tool preference will vary, but good luck with whatever you use! I've sadly never found an equivalent to this tool in PaintTool SAI, but the Pencil tool in Photoshop is practically the same, just with slight opacity differences.

Final notes: I guess if there's anything to take away from this tutorial, it's:

1) Keep your sketches loose. A lot of artists struggle when they start to paint because they keep trying to get it to match their clean, polished lines, when really, painting is really more about "carving" form out of colors and rough sketches. When coloring lineart too often we let the lines define the form, and then we don't know what to do with the color! In painting, let the colors define the form!

2) Explore the color box, and experiment. Don't move linearly--explore what combinations of saturation and desaturation give you! Color-pick across pieces you like, see how they worked with their colors. Don't be afraid of dancing around colors (though it's usually easier to do with desaturated tones)!

3) Don't overwork it! Overworking something--such as the too-refined sketch, and the too-much-shading on the ear, are really easy to spot though we often don't realize what we're looking at at first--we just know that it feels off, that it feels like the artist struggled in that area. The simpler you can keep something, the better and more natural it will look, usually. If you're fighting something, stop, step back, and try to figure out why. Try to do the minimum work necessary for something to feel "right", and then leave it alone! That's a skill to develop, learning to ease back! (As someone who's OCD about details, I can testify.)

4) NEVER GIVE UP. I included lots of embarrassingly old oekakis I did to show you guys, it takes more than one try to pick this stuff up, so don't get discouraged! Keep trying, and keep experimenting as you go! Even now, every time I try to do something a little different in how I pick my skin tones, and it's helped me a lot in getting to where I am today.

Good luck, and please let me know if there's anything I can do to help, or any tips/crits you'd like to offer.
Keep painting!

[PART ONE: THE BASICS]